Lavi | nameless (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
historyrabbit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
niteo_nix2012-10-22 01:30 pm
historyrabbit) wrote in niteo_nix2012-10-22 01:30 pm
Chapter Thirty [Memory; Action]
The memory that plays out is vivid, full of details. The gift and the curse that is a Bookman's memory.
Staring up at a ceiling is one Bookman Junior, years younger with a uniform he doesn't even have anymore. An orange scarf so tattered that it's amazing it's still holding together. He's resting after getting back from a mission, wondering why it feels like that one made more of an imprint on him than any before.
Was it Doug? A Finder who had said Lavi's eye was like glass but had finally changed to something warmer.
Was it Celeste? The little girl who found herself wrapped up in the mission without knowing and had made a connection with both Doug and Lavi.
Or even still, was it the realization that he had a home to come back to for once. A term as foreign as it was familiar but it had never once applied to him. Lavi thought of the Order and he had a warmth in his chest as he thought about the various people who lived here with him. Doug, the old man, Lenalee, Kanda, Komui, Reever and Johnny and the others. He felt as if he belonged here.
And now he was just waiting for Doug to come home, his first friend. Doug had stayed behind in the town of Elysee to give a gift to Colette and make living arrangements for the young orphan. He was eager to know how the little girl reacted even if she never did call Lavi by his name.
Suddenly screams of terror an pain from the halls nearby rouse him from his bed. Lavi all but falls over himself trying to get out there with Innocence in hand, wondering what it was that could have caused the yells. Only...
Once he gets there he finds a number of Finders, all of them dead and impaled in the same fashion as those attacked by the Akuma in Elysee. Confusion clouds his thoughts, he got rid of that Akuma, he knows that he did. One of the men in the pile stirs, not quite dead and Lavi leaps to his side, kneeling.
"What happened here? Who did this?" An Akuma couldn't have gotten inside the Order, could it? There was the main gate that was able to detect Akuma and no one knew about the underground entrance via the river except Finders and Exorcists. He couldn't imagine one of them giving up that information even under duress.
"Do-Doug..." The Finder points down the hall in the direction that Lavi's friend had gone before succumbing to his injuries. Gritting his teeth Lavi gets up and follows after the young Finder, finally finding him. Only Doug isn't as the redhead left him.
Doug's eyes, once full of light and life are now dulled and darkened in a way that even Lavi's hadn't been. Eyes so dark they could only belong to an Akuma. Doug wasn't alone, a golem of the Millennium Earl's, Dobi, accompanies him in order to send a message to the Earl of the entrance's location. It's from Dobi that Lavi learns that Serge, owner of the diamond that was part of the fight in Elysee and former employer of Colette, thought the young girl had stolen it and strangled her to death. Doug had been so heartbroken when he found her body that he gave in to the Earl's wicked way of tricking mourners into bringing back their loved ones.
Doug had called back Colette's soul to the skeletal machine and Colette, under instruction of the Earl, killed Doug and put on his skin. A skin now transformed into a level-two Akuma, ready to attack and kill Lavi as it had the Finders in the hall.
Lavi hesitates in his grief for his friend - how could he kill Doug? - and is hit by one of the Akuma's attacks in the narrow hallway. He snaps out of his daze slowly, defending at first to keep from becoming injured even more. And then after he gathers enough strength, enough determination to do this horrible act, Lavi has tears in his eye as he ends Doug and Colette's existence.
He hears the old man's voice in the background, turning to look at a short man with a mostly bald head save for a long ponytail in the center and huge circles of kohl around his eyes. Bookman. Congratulating him on a job well done.
Inside Lavi didn't feel like being congratulated. Inside it felt as if his heart were breaking. But he couldn't show his grief, to do so would show to his mentor that he was growing a heart.
He must never grow a heart.
---
[Those that try to find Lavi after such a vivid memory won't find him in his room, won't find him where his projects are, won't find him anywhere near the apartment building at all. Even injured as he is from his trip home the only place the redhead will be found is a place that only one remaining person knows about. One of the ruined train cars that still has a roof, a place that he hid out months ago, if not more than a year ago.
He sits there huddled up on a mostly preserved bench seat under a protected part of the roof, it still had holes in it in places, with a supply of food and drink, his pillow and blanket. Perhaps he was running but he didn't care.]
Staring up at a ceiling is one Bookman Junior, years younger with a uniform he doesn't even have anymore. An orange scarf so tattered that it's amazing it's still holding together. He's resting after getting back from a mission, wondering why it feels like that one made more of an imprint on him than any before.
Was it Doug? A Finder who had said Lavi's eye was like glass but had finally changed to something warmer.
Was it Celeste? The little girl who found herself wrapped up in the mission without knowing and had made a connection with both Doug and Lavi.
Or even still, was it the realization that he had a home to come back to for once. A term as foreign as it was familiar but it had never once applied to him. Lavi thought of the Order and he had a warmth in his chest as he thought about the various people who lived here with him. Doug, the old man, Lenalee, Kanda, Komui, Reever and Johnny and the others. He felt as if he belonged here.
And now he was just waiting for Doug to come home, his first friend. Doug had stayed behind in the town of Elysee to give a gift to Colette and make living arrangements for the young orphan. He was eager to know how the little girl reacted even if she never did call Lavi by his name.
Suddenly screams of terror an pain from the halls nearby rouse him from his bed. Lavi all but falls over himself trying to get out there with Innocence in hand, wondering what it was that could have caused the yells. Only...
Once he gets there he finds a number of Finders, all of them dead and impaled in the same fashion as those attacked by the Akuma in Elysee. Confusion clouds his thoughts, he got rid of that Akuma, he knows that he did. One of the men in the pile stirs, not quite dead and Lavi leaps to his side, kneeling.
"What happened here? Who did this?" An Akuma couldn't have gotten inside the Order, could it? There was the main gate that was able to detect Akuma and no one knew about the underground entrance via the river except Finders and Exorcists. He couldn't imagine one of them giving up that information even under duress.
"Do-Doug..." The Finder points down the hall in the direction that Lavi's friend had gone before succumbing to his injuries. Gritting his teeth Lavi gets up and follows after the young Finder, finally finding him. Only Doug isn't as the redhead left him.
Doug's eyes, once full of light and life are now dulled and darkened in a way that even Lavi's hadn't been. Eyes so dark they could only belong to an Akuma. Doug wasn't alone, a golem of the Millennium Earl's, Dobi, accompanies him in order to send a message to the Earl of the entrance's location. It's from Dobi that Lavi learns that Serge, owner of the diamond that was part of the fight in Elysee and former employer of Colette, thought the young girl had stolen it and strangled her to death. Doug had been so heartbroken when he found her body that he gave in to the Earl's wicked way of tricking mourners into bringing back their loved ones.
Doug had called back Colette's soul to the skeletal machine and Colette, under instruction of the Earl, killed Doug and put on his skin. A skin now transformed into a level-two Akuma, ready to attack and kill Lavi as it had the Finders in the hall.
Lavi hesitates in his grief for his friend - how could he kill Doug? - and is hit by one of the Akuma's attacks in the narrow hallway. He snaps out of his daze slowly, defending at first to keep from becoming injured even more. And then after he gathers enough strength, enough determination to do this horrible act, Lavi has tears in his eye as he ends Doug and Colette's existence.
He hears the old man's voice in the background, turning to look at a short man with a mostly bald head save for a long ponytail in the center and huge circles of kohl around his eyes. Bookman. Congratulating him on a job well done.
Inside Lavi didn't feel like being congratulated. Inside it felt as if his heart were breaking. But he couldn't show his grief, to do so would show to his mentor that he was growing a heart.
He must never grow a heart.
---
[Those that try to find Lavi after such a vivid memory won't find him in his room, won't find him where his projects are, won't find him anywhere near the apartment building at all. Even injured as he is from his trip home the only place the redhead will be found is a place that only one remaining person knows about. One of the ruined train cars that still has a roof, a place that he hid out months ago, if not more than a year ago.
He sits there huddled up on a mostly preserved bench seat under a protected part of the roof, it still had holes in it in places, with a supply of food and drink, his pillow and blanket. Perhaps he was running but he didn't care.]
voice
It was a long time ago, I'm not sad anymore. [Lies.]
Re: voice
Yes you are.
voice
Re: voice
voice
[He still hasn't broken from being a Bookman all of the way.]
Re: voice
voice
Re: voice
voice