DGM, "Phoenix"
On a seemingly innocent errand for Komui, Allen encounters a man who's been dead for four years. And Lavi is surprised to see him, too.
Warnings: Dead men walking without any eyepatches at all. Inappropriate brandy consumption. Incredible dorkiness. Allen forgiving everyone.
Currently gen, for the Lavi/Allen prompt 'Year [faces that stay with you forever]'.
.phoenix.
Allen had his head lowered against the cold wind that whipped at his hood and plastered his long coat to his legs. If the wind hadn't been quite so high, or quite so bitingly clear, he might not have heard the voice that carried on it -- the familiar laughter that made him stop and stand straight. It seemed to carry him away as well: back to another time, four years ago, when they had all laughed...
Although perhaps fate was not so easily avoided as a chance wisp of wind. Timcanpy, curled around his neck inside the hood of his coat, jumped at the sound and slipped out to investigate, and Allen had only to turn his head and follow the bright glimmer of gold to see the face that went with that long-unheard voice.
There was no doubt that it was him. He was tall and thin, that red mop of hair familiar even grown longer and tied back loosely at the nape of his neck, and both of his eyes were a clear, soft green, focused single-mindedly on a stout older woman. He was Lavi, shed of his old black leather and clad in modest daywear and a brown frock coat and a smile that could win over the oldest of souls.
And he wasn't dead.
"Impossible," Allen murmured, turning fully to see him, and then, louder, "Lavi!"
The man's head lifted slightly at the call. The nostalgic gesture of one hearing something he'd almost forgotten about, thinking back to different times. Not a gesture of recognition.
You bloody son of a bitch, Allen thought, and he couldn't have said if he was amused or relieved or excited or bitter, or maybe he was all of those things and he simply couldn't have said which one he was most. "Lavi!"
Perhaps twice was too difficult to chalk up to coincidence. Lavi started to look around, really look around that time, but before he could catch sight of Allen in the crowd there was a streak of gold aimed straight for him. Allen could hear the stout woman gasp, "Oh! Mr. Bookman, there's a-- There's a bat!" She rose up on tiptoes, waving angrily near his head, and Lavi lifted his arms to help.
"Ah, wait, Patricia," Lavi said sharply, turning as he caught sight of Timcanpy. He lifted his arms, offering, and Tim slowly spiraled in past them to land on his head. His gaze lowered, scanning the crowd swiftly, and settled unerringly on Allen, even hidden beneath his plain black hood. His right eye was a paler green than his left. "Sorry," Allen heard him say, "but can we talk another time?"
The stout woman seemed flustered, but it was not difficult to see that Lavi's interest was elsewhere now. The moment her back was turned, Allen took one involuntary step forward, and then another, and then a flurry of quick footsteps until he was right there, in front of him, Lavi, but his arms would not reach out and hug him.
Lavi was still taller than he was.
"You're alive!" Allen said numbly. "Everyone said-- That when you and Bookman--"
"Yeah, about that..." Lavi said, scratching the back of his neck. "Rumors of my death may have been exaggerated."
If his arms started working, he was either going to hug the man or put a fist right in his rueful grin. "What happened? Did you-- did you fake your deaths?!"
The cold air felt all the colder when he remembered how it had been. How gentle and wounded Komui had seemed when he listed those who had died in action; the way that it felt to Allen like he had turned to stone when he heard Bookman, Bookman Junior, among the fallen. All the weeks, months that it had taken to process that someone like Lavi, bright and empathetic and damaged, could simply die without altering the fundamental structure of the world. All the months that he had kept walking, half-feeling like he might be living in a different world entirely, without the tall laughing boy who had become his best friend so easily.
But that hadn't been a different world at all. Because Lavi was standing right here.
Not dead.
"That's pretty much what happened," Lavi admitted. "But... it wasn't a choice made lightly, if that's any consolation."
Maybe it was, in some way, but Allen wasn't quite ready to accept consolation yet. "Then, Bookman...?"
"Allen." Lavi was smiling, his tone mild, the same way he might have spoken to an excited child. "I'm Bookman, now. I have been ever since I left the Order."
Oh. A stupid thing to bring up, perhaps -- even if Bookman's death had been fictitious, the little man would've been ancient, years past his ninetieth birthday, and the days when Allen would have believed Bookman invincible, indestructible, had been left behind when he was sixteen, in a somber ceremony scattering the ashes of the dead to the wind. Even if he had survived, there was no guarantee he'd have survived the last four years.
"I don't understand why," Allen murmured, lifting his arms finally, but he folded them over his chest instead. The impulse to hug his old friend had come and... mostly gone. "If Bookman did die -- and you had to become Bookman -- that's fine, okay, I understand that. But why couldn't you just say so? Do you have any idea..."
He cut himself off, lips tightening into a bitter line, and then he demanded roughly, "Why go through so much trouble to fake your death? We were your friends, we deserved better than that!"
Lavi tossed him a bright, lying grin. "Well, maybe I knew that you'd say things like that when I told you I had to leave and forget all about everyone, and then neither of us would get anything productive done."
They stood there for a long moment, motionless on the street, except for Timcanpy, who launched himself suddenly into the air and fluttered in anxious circles overhead. Finally Allen said, "I'm a nuisance, you're saying? A relic of the past you'd rather leave behind? Then tell me to go." He tipped his head back and met Lavi's two eyes defiantly. Even his eyes had lied to him all that time.
The right eye was a pale grass green, laced with a strange pattern of silver.
Another long moment passed. The redhead rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't say I didn't want you around. Just that it's not really good for my career."
He couldn't say it. Something inside Allen unwound, as if that simple discovery made all the years of thinking he was dead more palatable. He thinks I'm in the way, but he still won't ask me to leave.
Dismissing those words quickly, Lavi waved, half-turning. "Hey, come with me? I was just going home to drop something off."
Allen hesitated for a heartbeat, and then nodded, smiling very slightly. They didn't move for a long moment, Lavi watching him with an unreadable expression and Allen waiting for him to lead the way.
Lavi's 'home' was a hotel room on the water, decorated with a thin pretense at personality, half-hearted decorations on the walls and furnishings, a shabby throw attempting to spruce up the back of a sofa. Allen ran gloved fingers over the fabric and imagined how unwelcoming it must feel.
It seemed like a lonely place to call home.
"Pretty funny to run into you here," Lavi was saying. "I'm actually in Newcastle on vacation. I've been a fan of Newcastle East End, you know, and so naturally I want to see how they're faring as Newcastle United. They're in the FA Cup Finals this year, and I wanted to come out, show my support for the team, you know."
"I don't much follow football. It's more Johnny's thing," Allen murmured, filing that information away. On vacation... Which meant this hotel was no more 'home' than any other place he stayed for a week before taking off to the next location on his list.
Lavi emerged from the other room, disheveled now, his tie loosened and his coat hanging open at his sides. He had always been good-looking, striking in a careless sort of way, and the oddity of his mismatched eyes was even more attention-grabbing than his eyepatch; unlike Kanda's colder, symmetrical beauty, it was hard to look away from him. Allen wondered if that was really desirable for a Bookman.
"Good old Johnny." He lifted the snifter in his hand, with a small amount of brandy swirling in the bowl. It was early for that sort of drink. "You still don't drink, right? Can I offer you something else? Kids get juice." He flashed a grin.
Allen lifted his eyebrows. "I'm nineteen."
But of course Lavi, with his eternal vantage point of three years, was not impressed by this assertion. He chuckled and seated himself, taking a sip from the brandy. "So what about you?" He waved Allen to the seat across from him. "What's your business in Newcastle?"
You, Allen thought, not moving for the seat. He wondered if Komui had sent him here on purpose, for exactly this reason. He wondered why he had been chosen, of everyone.
Play hard to get, were his orders.
Smoothly, he said, "Komui asked me to find him a linguistic expert."
There was a brief silence, in which Allen did not look at Lavi, and Lavi did not look too interested. Finally curiosity overcame his affectations, and the young Bookman asked casually, "Oh yeah? What's he got -- an instruction manual for the Ark, only it's tragically in Swahili?"
"You're half right," Allen said.
He waited again. It didn't take as long this time; Lavi recovered quicker, laughing. "You're not going to make me pry it out of you one question at a time, are you, sprout?"
It was still reflex to snap It's Allen, but he restrained himself, instead pointing out dryly, "Even your insults are four years out of date. Kanda stopped thinking that was funny when I got to be his height."
"Still not my height, though! Anyhow, they say the old ones are the good ones."
He sounded blithe, but his attention was very subtly caught. Despite his joking, he was waiting almost impatiently for more information. Allen smiled slightly and indulged him. "The Order recently took control of a dig site from an ancient society. I'm not too clear on the details. We found a series of scrolls in a stone vault, and no one can read them... But Bak and Komui have managed to identify the word 'machine' throughout the scrolls, and they believe it refers to the Ark."
Lavi looked down, swirling the brandy in his glass thoughtfully. Allen watched him, the cogs turning almost visibly in his head. "...how ancient, exactly?"
"Somewhere around three thousand years old, I believe."
That was the thing about bookish types, Allen decided. They spent so much of their time reading and learning that they couldn't really stop. He'd seen it in the Science Department, in Nalei, and in Lavi.
He wouldn't be able to pass up the chance to play with such a rare new toy.
Allen had to spare a moment to admire Komui's plan.
"You know," Lavi suggested, as if it had just occurred to him. "Technically, I'm pretty good with ancient languages. Maybe I could help."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. In fact, I've seen most of the existing writing from that era." Lavi tapped his temple pointedly. "Lemme guess. Was it in... Jordan?"
He seemed very certain of himself. Allen smiled brightly and said, "I don't know," and kept smiling as Lavi deflated, wind stolen from his sails. "I only visit the excavation site through the Ark. It could be on the moon, for all I know."
Lavi shook his head, taking another sip of his brandy. "If you came here to find a linguist, you must have something of the language to show to him. I could help you out if you let me see it."
Timcanpy took flight, hovering behind Allen anxiously as if recognizing his cue, but Allen tilted his head, deliberating. "I'm not supposed to show it to anyone until they've agreed to do the work..."
"That doesn't apply to me, come on!" Lavi got up and sauntered across the room to sling an arm casually over Allen's shoulders. "Am I your friend, or am I your friend?"
Only you know the answer to that, Allen thought, gaze slipping away. "I suppose it isn't too big a deal," he relented, and Tim responded with more joyous fluttering, circling the room to a blank wall and then opening wide to project a visual recording onto its bland white surface. Lavi broke away immediately to edge up to it, eyes going wide.
It wasn't all that interesting a recording. A schizophrenic viewpoint on the excavation site, wildly swinging back and forth over the cavernous ceiling, and then down to a cluster of heads that Lavi might recognize from the back as the remnants of the Science Department; some more zig-zagging ensued before Tim managed to get around them to peer at the scrolls. He focused in on the text, affording a clear, if shaky, view of the symbols, and hands pointing at a few of them, Komui's tinny voice excitedly explaining why he thought the scrolls must be discussing the Ark.
"Yeah, your site is in Jordan," Lavi said, very vague and distant. "That's a form of Canaanite that I've only seen once, in Deir Alla. I can definitely help them decipher these. That is-- if we're ready to admit that there's no linguist in Newcastle who'd know anything about Deir Alla."
Allen made a face. Perhaps he hadn't been as subtle as he'd thought. "Sorry. But it got you interested anyway, right?" he prodded, smiling
Timcanpy's recording ended abruptly, and he fluttered up and away. Lavi didn't move, still staring at the wall where the scrolls had been, and Allen imagined him running over the perfect imprint of their text in his mind, until Lavi said slowly, "You don't hate it?"
"Hate it? Hate what?" Allen lifted his eyebrows, curious. Hate was such a strong word, and he didn't like using it. Hating people was childish. Hating things was foolish. Even during the war, he hadn't hated the akuma or the Noah.
"...Having to work with me."
Allen felt his eyes widen, surprised. He took a step closer to Lavi, quickly saying, "Of course I don't hate it. You're my friend, and I'd have given anything to have you back, all this time. If I've said anything to make you feel otherwise..."
"I can't believe you'd still want to see me," Lavi said, shaking his head sharply. He wasn't looking at Allen. "After I let you think I was dead for five years."
"Four," Allen corrected.
"Four years, seven months, and three days." The redhead closed his eyes, so he missed Allen's surprised start. "You should've left me behind ages ago. If you resented me, or yelled at me, I'd totally respect that."
Half an hour ago, he might have guilted Allen into silence. He had wondered, himself, if he should resent Lavi, thought about railing at him with all the futile frustration of learning that he'd been lied to for the last few years of his life. He was so tired of lies.
But when Allen had given him the chance, Lavi hadn't been able to tell him to leave. He'd all but admitted that he'd only left because he didn't see any other choice.
That was all he needed to know. "I don't give up on anyone," Allen said, simple.
Lavi's green eyes met his gray, and that hung in the air between them, meanings filling the lingering silence. He hoped Lavi could hear it as well as he could: I haven't given up on you.
Then Lavi tossed him a bright smile, surreal in its sudden good cheer. "Then I guess you should take me to your leader," he said. "But I'm not missing the FA Cup Finals, not even for Deir Alla."
Allen reached out to the Ark and opened a door for them to HQ, bypassing the cold.
Warnings: Dead men walking without any eyepatches at all. Inappropriate brandy consumption. Incredible dorkiness. Allen forgiving everyone.
Currently gen, for the Lavi/Allen prompt 'Year [faces that stay with you forever]'.
.phoenix.
Allen had his head lowered against the cold wind that whipped at his hood and plastered his long coat to his legs. If the wind hadn't been quite so high, or quite so bitingly clear, he might not have heard the voice that carried on it -- the familiar laughter that made him stop and stand straight. It seemed to carry him away as well: back to another time, four years ago, when they had all laughed...
Although perhaps fate was not so easily avoided as a chance wisp of wind. Timcanpy, curled around his neck inside the hood of his coat, jumped at the sound and slipped out to investigate, and Allen had only to turn his head and follow the bright glimmer of gold to see the face that went with that long-unheard voice.
There was no doubt that it was him. He was tall and thin, that red mop of hair familiar even grown longer and tied back loosely at the nape of his neck, and both of his eyes were a clear, soft green, focused single-mindedly on a stout older woman. He was Lavi, shed of his old black leather and clad in modest daywear and a brown frock coat and a smile that could win over the oldest of souls.
And he wasn't dead.
"Impossible," Allen murmured, turning fully to see him, and then, louder, "Lavi!"
The man's head lifted slightly at the call. The nostalgic gesture of one hearing something he'd almost forgotten about, thinking back to different times. Not a gesture of recognition.
You bloody son of a bitch, Allen thought, and he couldn't have said if he was amused or relieved or excited or bitter, or maybe he was all of those things and he simply couldn't have said which one he was most. "Lavi!"
Perhaps twice was too difficult to chalk up to coincidence. Lavi started to look around, really look around that time, but before he could catch sight of Allen in the crowd there was a streak of gold aimed straight for him. Allen could hear the stout woman gasp, "Oh! Mr. Bookman, there's a-- There's a bat!" She rose up on tiptoes, waving angrily near his head, and Lavi lifted his arms to help.
"Ah, wait, Patricia," Lavi said sharply, turning as he caught sight of Timcanpy. He lifted his arms, offering, and Tim slowly spiraled in past them to land on his head. His gaze lowered, scanning the crowd swiftly, and settled unerringly on Allen, even hidden beneath his plain black hood. His right eye was a paler green than his left. "Sorry," Allen heard him say, "but can we talk another time?"
The stout woman seemed flustered, but it was not difficult to see that Lavi's interest was elsewhere now. The moment her back was turned, Allen took one involuntary step forward, and then another, and then a flurry of quick footsteps until he was right there, in front of him, Lavi, but his arms would not reach out and hug him.
Lavi was still taller than he was.
"You're alive!" Allen said numbly. "Everyone said-- That when you and Bookman--"
"Yeah, about that..." Lavi said, scratching the back of his neck. "Rumors of my death may have been exaggerated."
If his arms started working, he was either going to hug the man or put a fist right in his rueful grin. "What happened? Did you-- did you fake your deaths?!"
The cold air felt all the colder when he remembered how it had been. How gentle and wounded Komui had seemed when he listed those who had died in action; the way that it felt to Allen like he had turned to stone when he heard Bookman, Bookman Junior, among the fallen. All the weeks, months that it had taken to process that someone like Lavi, bright and empathetic and damaged, could simply die without altering the fundamental structure of the world. All the months that he had kept walking, half-feeling like he might be living in a different world entirely, without the tall laughing boy who had become his best friend so easily.
But that hadn't been a different world at all. Because Lavi was standing right here.
Not dead.
"That's pretty much what happened," Lavi admitted. "But... it wasn't a choice made lightly, if that's any consolation."
Maybe it was, in some way, but Allen wasn't quite ready to accept consolation yet. "Then, Bookman...?"
"Allen." Lavi was smiling, his tone mild, the same way he might have spoken to an excited child. "I'm Bookman, now. I have been ever since I left the Order."
Oh. A stupid thing to bring up, perhaps -- even if Bookman's death had been fictitious, the little man would've been ancient, years past his ninetieth birthday, and the days when Allen would have believed Bookman invincible, indestructible, had been left behind when he was sixteen, in a somber ceremony scattering the ashes of the dead to the wind. Even if he had survived, there was no guarantee he'd have survived the last four years.
"I don't understand why," Allen murmured, lifting his arms finally, but he folded them over his chest instead. The impulse to hug his old friend had come and... mostly gone. "If Bookman did die -- and you had to become Bookman -- that's fine, okay, I understand that. But why couldn't you just say so? Do you have any idea..."
He cut himself off, lips tightening into a bitter line, and then he demanded roughly, "Why go through so much trouble to fake your death? We were your friends, we deserved better than that!"
Lavi tossed him a bright, lying grin. "Well, maybe I knew that you'd say things like that when I told you I had to leave and forget all about everyone, and then neither of us would get anything productive done."
They stood there for a long moment, motionless on the street, except for Timcanpy, who launched himself suddenly into the air and fluttered in anxious circles overhead. Finally Allen said, "I'm a nuisance, you're saying? A relic of the past you'd rather leave behind? Then tell me to go." He tipped his head back and met Lavi's two eyes defiantly. Even his eyes had lied to him all that time.
The right eye was a pale grass green, laced with a strange pattern of silver.
Another long moment passed. The redhead rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't say I didn't want you around. Just that it's not really good for my career."
He couldn't say it. Something inside Allen unwound, as if that simple discovery made all the years of thinking he was dead more palatable. He thinks I'm in the way, but he still won't ask me to leave.
Dismissing those words quickly, Lavi waved, half-turning. "Hey, come with me? I was just going home to drop something off."
Allen hesitated for a heartbeat, and then nodded, smiling very slightly. They didn't move for a long moment, Lavi watching him with an unreadable expression and Allen waiting for him to lead the way.
Lavi's 'home' was a hotel room on the water, decorated with a thin pretense at personality, half-hearted decorations on the walls and furnishings, a shabby throw attempting to spruce up the back of a sofa. Allen ran gloved fingers over the fabric and imagined how unwelcoming it must feel.
It seemed like a lonely place to call home.
"Pretty funny to run into you here," Lavi was saying. "I'm actually in Newcastle on vacation. I've been a fan of Newcastle East End, you know, and so naturally I want to see how they're faring as Newcastle United. They're in the FA Cup Finals this year, and I wanted to come out, show my support for the team, you know."
"I don't much follow football. It's more Johnny's thing," Allen murmured, filing that information away. On vacation... Which meant this hotel was no more 'home' than any other place he stayed for a week before taking off to the next location on his list.
Lavi emerged from the other room, disheveled now, his tie loosened and his coat hanging open at his sides. He had always been good-looking, striking in a careless sort of way, and the oddity of his mismatched eyes was even more attention-grabbing than his eyepatch; unlike Kanda's colder, symmetrical beauty, it was hard to look away from him. Allen wondered if that was really desirable for a Bookman.
"Good old Johnny." He lifted the snifter in his hand, with a small amount of brandy swirling in the bowl. It was early for that sort of drink. "You still don't drink, right? Can I offer you something else? Kids get juice." He flashed a grin.
Allen lifted his eyebrows. "I'm nineteen."
But of course Lavi, with his eternal vantage point of three years, was not impressed by this assertion. He chuckled and seated himself, taking a sip from the brandy. "So what about you?" He waved Allen to the seat across from him. "What's your business in Newcastle?"
You, Allen thought, not moving for the seat. He wondered if Komui had sent him here on purpose, for exactly this reason. He wondered why he had been chosen, of everyone.
Play hard to get, were his orders.
Smoothly, he said, "Komui asked me to find him a linguistic expert."
There was a brief silence, in which Allen did not look at Lavi, and Lavi did not look too interested. Finally curiosity overcame his affectations, and the young Bookman asked casually, "Oh yeah? What's he got -- an instruction manual for the Ark, only it's tragically in Swahili?"
"You're half right," Allen said.
He waited again. It didn't take as long this time; Lavi recovered quicker, laughing. "You're not going to make me pry it out of you one question at a time, are you, sprout?"
It was still reflex to snap It's Allen, but he restrained himself, instead pointing out dryly, "Even your insults are four years out of date. Kanda stopped thinking that was funny when I got to be his height."
"Still not my height, though! Anyhow, they say the old ones are the good ones."
He sounded blithe, but his attention was very subtly caught. Despite his joking, he was waiting almost impatiently for more information. Allen smiled slightly and indulged him. "The Order recently took control of a dig site from an ancient society. I'm not too clear on the details. We found a series of scrolls in a stone vault, and no one can read them... But Bak and Komui have managed to identify the word 'machine' throughout the scrolls, and they believe it refers to the Ark."
Lavi looked down, swirling the brandy in his glass thoughtfully. Allen watched him, the cogs turning almost visibly in his head. "...how ancient, exactly?"
"Somewhere around three thousand years old, I believe."
That was the thing about bookish types, Allen decided. They spent so much of their time reading and learning that they couldn't really stop. He'd seen it in the Science Department, in Nalei, and in Lavi.
He wouldn't be able to pass up the chance to play with such a rare new toy.
Allen had to spare a moment to admire Komui's plan.
"You know," Lavi suggested, as if it had just occurred to him. "Technically, I'm pretty good with ancient languages. Maybe I could help."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. In fact, I've seen most of the existing writing from that era." Lavi tapped his temple pointedly. "Lemme guess. Was it in... Jordan?"
He seemed very certain of himself. Allen smiled brightly and said, "I don't know," and kept smiling as Lavi deflated, wind stolen from his sails. "I only visit the excavation site through the Ark. It could be on the moon, for all I know."
Lavi shook his head, taking another sip of his brandy. "If you came here to find a linguist, you must have something of the language to show to him. I could help you out if you let me see it."
Timcanpy took flight, hovering behind Allen anxiously as if recognizing his cue, but Allen tilted his head, deliberating. "I'm not supposed to show it to anyone until they've agreed to do the work..."
"That doesn't apply to me, come on!" Lavi got up and sauntered across the room to sling an arm casually over Allen's shoulders. "Am I your friend, or am I your friend?"
Only you know the answer to that, Allen thought, gaze slipping away. "I suppose it isn't too big a deal," he relented, and Tim responded with more joyous fluttering, circling the room to a blank wall and then opening wide to project a visual recording onto its bland white surface. Lavi broke away immediately to edge up to it, eyes going wide.
It wasn't all that interesting a recording. A schizophrenic viewpoint on the excavation site, wildly swinging back and forth over the cavernous ceiling, and then down to a cluster of heads that Lavi might recognize from the back as the remnants of the Science Department; some more zig-zagging ensued before Tim managed to get around them to peer at the scrolls. He focused in on the text, affording a clear, if shaky, view of the symbols, and hands pointing at a few of them, Komui's tinny voice excitedly explaining why he thought the scrolls must be discussing the Ark.
"Yeah, your site is in Jordan," Lavi said, very vague and distant. "That's a form of Canaanite that I've only seen once, in Deir Alla. I can definitely help them decipher these. That is-- if we're ready to admit that there's no linguist in Newcastle who'd know anything about Deir Alla."
Allen made a face. Perhaps he hadn't been as subtle as he'd thought. "Sorry. But it got you interested anyway, right?" he prodded, smiling
Timcanpy's recording ended abruptly, and he fluttered up and away. Lavi didn't move, still staring at the wall where the scrolls had been, and Allen imagined him running over the perfect imprint of their text in his mind, until Lavi said slowly, "You don't hate it?"
"Hate it? Hate what?" Allen lifted his eyebrows, curious. Hate was such a strong word, and he didn't like using it. Hating people was childish. Hating things was foolish. Even during the war, he hadn't hated the akuma or the Noah.
"...Having to work with me."
Allen felt his eyes widen, surprised. He took a step closer to Lavi, quickly saying, "Of course I don't hate it. You're my friend, and I'd have given anything to have you back, all this time. If I've said anything to make you feel otherwise..."
"I can't believe you'd still want to see me," Lavi said, shaking his head sharply. He wasn't looking at Allen. "After I let you think I was dead for five years."
"Four," Allen corrected.
"Four years, seven months, and three days." The redhead closed his eyes, so he missed Allen's surprised start. "You should've left me behind ages ago. If you resented me, or yelled at me, I'd totally respect that."
Half an hour ago, he might have guilted Allen into silence. He had wondered, himself, if he should resent Lavi, thought about railing at him with all the futile frustration of learning that he'd been lied to for the last few years of his life. He was so tired of lies.
But when Allen had given him the chance, Lavi hadn't been able to tell him to leave. He'd all but admitted that he'd only left because he didn't see any other choice.
That was all he needed to know. "I don't give up on anyone," Allen said, simple.
Lavi's green eyes met his gray, and that hung in the air between them, meanings filling the lingering silence. He hoped Lavi could hear it as well as he could: I haven't given up on you.
Then Lavi tossed him a bright smile, surreal in its sudden good cheer. "Then I guess you should take me to your leader," he said. "But I'm not missing the FA Cup Finals, not even for Deir Alla."
Allen reached out to the Ark and opened a door for them to HQ, bypassing the cold.