Stranger on the Shore. D.Gray-man. PG13. 6100 words.
D.Gray-man. Lavi/Fourteenth Noah. Lavi/Allen Walker. PG13.
Warnings: Sacrilege, language
Beta: nherizu. She has worked hard for her own gift. :P
Summary: Following someone is not easy.
Read on AO3.
For nherizu and sheilaluv. Thank you, guys, for being fab friends.
This is a pain to write. The first sentence was put to paper back in 2009, when D.Gray-man was not as complicated and as plagued by subplots as now, therefore, some explanations are not canon accurate.
Stranger on the Shore
"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it.”
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum.
In Amsterdam, Walker led Lavi through a red light district within the heart of the city, where painted signs advertised sexual aids and live sex shows that left nothing for the imagination. They walked down a smaller alley, until they reached an open door of a dilapidated apartment. Through the door and up a narrow staircase, they came to a small landing, where an Asian man sat on a wooden chair in front of another doorway.
The man stood up as he noticed their approach. He talked with a heavily accented Dutch, “What business do you have here?”
Walker slunk up to the man’s side to whisper something in his ear. The man showed immediate reaction. His feature visibly became several shades paler as he took a faltering step back.
“W-wait here, I’ll inform Da Sao about your visit,” he stuttered out before scurrying off, vanishing behind laced curtain that substituted a door.
Walker followed him, paying no heed to the man’s words. Lavi, left alone and uncertain of what to do, decided to trace Walker’s steps. He parted the curtain and walked inside.
He looked past Walker’s shoulder. There were about a dozen men and women in the small, gloomy room; most of them lying on cots and the rest sitting sprawled on the floor. The air was pungent with strangely saccharine smell coming from the long pipes they were smoking. None of them paid attention to the newcomers, lost in their haze.
Walker turned his head a fraction to address Lavi.
“Lavi, wait here,” he said, before ambling to the back of the room, avoiding some people sprawling along the wall, and disappearing behind a door.
Lavi stood stupefied by the lethargic activities around him. It was an opium den. He had heard of, read of places like this, but never would he imagine finding one under the daylight. How come Walker had contacts in here, would be a mystery he wanted to solve.
As the swirling wisp of smoke began to affect him, tugging at the base of his mood, trying to pull him into the lethargic haze as well, Walker came out from the door; behind him, was an old lady. They spoke softly, too quiet to carry across the room, yet somehow distinct enough for Lavi to catch the end of each word, although, they made no sense to him.
Their conversation ceased as they reached Lavi. Walker flicked a glance in the old lady’s direction, and began again, in perfect Dutch (a language Lavi never associated with Allen), “He is the Bookman Junior.”
The old lady settled her eyes on Lavi. She had a pair of disturbingly clear, jet black eyes, incongruous in the sea of wilted skin of her face. Her long hair, although in the same color as Walker who was standing beside her, was lusterless and dull; the vibrant red Chinese robe that she wore contrasted with her aged skin.
“Oh yes,” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard of Yao taking an apprentice again! Never imagined I would meet said apprentice one day.”
Lavi was more than a little disturbed at the direct reference to Bookman by a name he never heard of, nevertheless, he offered the old lady a smile.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
She returned his smile, the wrinkles across her face creasing deeper. “How is Yao? It’s been so long since the last time I saw him, perhaps,” she paused. “Perhaps twenty years, I’m not sure, maybe longer.”
“My master is fine,” Lavi replied. “I’ll tell him a beautiful lady is asking after him.”
“Oh my,” the woman laughed, the humor clear in her ageless eyes. “I might be beautiful in my younger days, with fair share of handsome and capable men asking for my hand, but now, as you see, time is inescapable. Although, it’d be nice if you could tell Yao that I’ve been missing him all these years.”
All this she told him with a raspy voice that betrayed her age, but also hinting in it the vitality of a loquacious girl. Lavi could only imagine the kind of past Panda had had with her.
“I think we should go,” Walker interrupted.
“Yeah, let’s.” Lavi nodded.
After bidding their goodbyes to the lady (Ming, she had insisted), they clambered back out and down the stairs.
“Cross will come to this city,” Walker said once they were outside, tracing back their steps to the alley, “I’m going to stay here.”
Lavi paid his companion a lingering glance that spoke far more than he let on. “I’ll stay too,” he said.
***
It was an overcast, windy afternoon, the second month of their travel, when Lavi first set foot on the island; a long sliver of land artificially created by dumping sand and earth between dock and quays that could only be reached by crossing draw-bridges. The houses, overshadowed by tall warehouses along the quays on the main land, were badly rundown. They were made of stones and woods, cramped so close together that the occupants must share the limited space of their lawns with their neighbors.
The alleys were gloomy even in the afternoon, with the sun blocked by corrugated iron roofs protruding hazardously, overlaying each other. Through one of the alleys, Walker led him to a tiny shack tucked away between two larger, equally rundown buildings.
Earlier, after visiting the old lady down at the red light district, Walker had miraculously procured a key from another one of his contact; this time, an old sailor who lived by the Zuiderzee bay. Lavi tried not to think too much of these contacts of Walker’s and how they came to, but he made a mental note of them nonetheless. The information might be necessary in the future. (Now, that, was an understatement. He made a mental note of everything).
They stood before a door with two windows flanking it -- so grimy that they could not see through the glass pane from outside.
It went without saying: this was where they would stay.
***
It scared the hell out of him, the first time it happened.
It was a quiet night at the beginning of winter. The recreation room was almost empty, save the last three who were sleeping soundly at one corner of the room, while the fire was dimming down to the last ember in the fireplace.
Link was in deep slumber, sprawled across a sofa, too tired to even maintain his usual light sleep after a long mission. Adjacent to him, separated by a low coffee table, was another sofa with the two occupants snoring lightly. On the table was a deck of cards, scattered across in a poker game; three set of hands laid open, one indicating a royal flush.
In the course of the night, after receiving news of Lenalee’s condition, who had been pummeled by a level three in the mission she had gone to with the three of them, they were washed by relief, and immediately relaxed, falling asleep on the couch as their exhaustion suddenly bearing down on them.
It was Lavi who stirred first as the temperature began to drop; the load on his shoulder was an anchor, which slowly chained him back into the waking world. It took him several minutes to clear the web of sleep from his mind; the image of his dream still hovered behind his eyes. It had not been a pleasant dream at all.
And then, Allen stirred. He lifted his head from Lavi’s shoulder, slowly unraveling his own web of sleep.
“Hey, Allen,” Lavi mumbled groggily. He shifted a little to the side, rolled his shoulder to work the circulation back. “You should go back to your room.”
He glanced at the white haired boy. The light from a chandelier at the middle of the room, the last one that had not been turned off, cast dim illumination over them.
Allen turned his face slowly. A sudden chill ran down Lavi’s spine as Allen locked eyes with him.
The person who faced him was not Allen at all.
***
Lavi had a hard time imagining how he would pass his days here, in the small room, with Walker. It had been a mere whim that prompted him to follow the Noah. He was chasing a pipe dream, and it would later get back at him for choosing this over his future, his responsibility, and Panda (from whom he owed all his knowledge, his life).
But it was not a mere Noah he was following. It was Allen.
Lavi waited for the question. Why are you following me? Why are you so persistent? He imagined Walker would ask.
He had stocked an answer -- answers, really, as transient as the question itself. Because you are using Allen’s body, he’d say.
Nevertheless, even he knew that it was not enough answer. He was not fluent in interpreting his own feeling -- so new at it. All this time, he thought himself better than the fools who obsessed over each other and died in the name of something as crazy as love.
He looked over to the Noah from his perch at the window.
Walker was sitting on his own bed; eyes closed and shoulder slumped. Timcampy was resting on his lap. The Noah was not sleeping, Lavi could tell, because he’d seen Walker do this a lot. Sitting with his eyes closed, for a long time, as if trying to meditate, or thinking over something, or maybe, and this sounded the most plausible for Lavi, remembering. The Noah often got a far off look in his eyes in their travel, stopping his track over something trivial: a gable stone depicting an obscure image in someone’s door, a fruit stand at the road side market, two children playing tags. The look -- pensive and deep set -- left a strong imprint in his perfect memory.
Perhaps, the reason why he followed Walker, Lavi tested again, was the unvoiced wish within him that strongly wanted Allen to show up, however small the chance was.
Grey eyes opened to fix right at his. The simple movement took Lavi off guard. He was caught staring at Walker openly. Lavi flickered his eye to the open sea beyond the window.
Reality reared its head every time he looked into Walker’s eyes. The grey eyes were the same shape, the same color as Allen’s, but it weren’t Allen’s. They were dead and empty.
“What are we going to do from here on?” Lavi asked, simply just to break the silence before it got unbearable.
The Noah’s eyes were still on him. “We wait.”
Wind lapped against Lavi’s face, playing with his red locks. “Huh. That’s boring.”
“You can take a look around the town.”
“I guess I will,” Lavi licked his lips. They were dry and salty.
***
There was a small window in the one room shack they shared. It opened to the ocean. Glittering blue surface stretched far into the horizon, dotted by the swells of boats and ships. If there was something that could lift the curse off this woebegone old shack, it was the vast sky over the water all around, the palpable wind, the salty air, the tang of rust hinting it.
Lavi spent most of the time inside by this window. He drew a chair -- rotten wood, likewise with the rest of the furniture -- and sat beside it. He read by daylight, recorded his travel and random event (an old habit that he couldn’t quite get rid of, even though he knew Panda would most likely beat him to a bloody pulp and leave him rot on the road side if he ever met him again), and sometimes, he simply stared out into the ocean, watching the dock workers loading barrels of coffee, chocolate, butter, sugar, and various things into multiple-masted ships, as a seagull dove down to snatch a fish, or as the cloud gathered into a big mass of rain cloud.
By day, Walker was rarely there. The Noah would leave with Timcampy as soon as the sun was up, and would be back right before the twilight set in. Lavi had no idea where the man had gone off during the day, and he never asked.
By night, they slept separately on the two available beds, each at one side of the wall, the window in between them. He’d been having problems sleeping at night, not because the bed was creaky and the wood supporting it threatened to collapse every time he moved, not because the stain in the ceiling looked like an eye, and not because the sound of crashing waves, nor the wind rattling the shack. It was because of his dreams. Ever since he arrived here, he had dreamt of many things, none of them was pleasant.
He stayed awake, mostly -- recalling in his mind Mark Twain’s description of the children of Western America lying in bed and counting the whistle of transcontinental train going by the night. He counted the crash of waves, one by one as they hit the shores, until he could not count anymore and sleep washed over him, too tired to dream, feeling like a child all over again.
***
Walker seemed to know his way very well in the city. He led Lavi around with determined and knowing steps, taking him around to meet his contacts, explaining to him the rough outline of the city, where to find what, which area he should not visit to avoid Black Order’s spies.
Once, as he walked around the city, too bored to stay inside all day, Lavi nearly bumped into Toma, the Finder. It was fortunate that Black Order’s disciples were required to wear distinct and eye catching attire on. Otherwise, he would not have found Toma before the man found him.
He quickly rounded a corner, darting out of the other man’s line of sight, and disappeared into a door of a nearby café.
“Hey! You, eye-patch over there,” someone called him from one corner of the café.
Looking up for the source, he could see a bald middle aged man waved him over to his table. The tiny place was packed full of patron, with every table occupied by three or four men, pursuing card games, or simply enjoying their midday meal.
Lavi pointed to himself.
The man grunted an affirmation. “Needin’ a seat, yeah? Come ‘ere before someone nabs it.”
He walked down the aisle and slid to the indicated chair beside the man, thanking him in the process. There were two others sitting at the table, making him the fourth man.
“Nice number for a nice game, don’t you say?” a younger man at the end of the table said, his hair was the color of rust brown, his chin unshaved.
Lavi eyed the table in front of him. Above the carpetry that covered the table -- many here seemed to do this a lot, a carpet over the table, instead of cloth -- was a deck of card, untouched in the middle of the flat surface. He hitched an eyebrow in doubt, taking care to show the expression.
The first man that had invited him over to their table laughed. His large hand, bulky and hairy which somewhat reminded Lavi of a gorilla’s, patted Lavi hard on the back; he said, “Don’t scare the young un’, you hooligans.”
“No joke? I think you are the one who scares him, Jan,” said another young man adjacent to Lavi. He was preoccupied with polishing a pocket watch. He gave Lavi a once over. “I’m Alvin. The brute over there is Jan. This one is Walter,” -- the one dubbed Walter, the man with unshaved chin, flashed a lopsided grin -- “Never seen you around before. Are you new here?”
“I’m Doug,” Lavi replied offhandedly. “Yeah, you could put it that way.”
Jan slammed his hand against the table, rattling it all around. “Good! That beckons for even greater calls of conviviality. Are ya’ American coming here to work too young un’? There seems to be increasin’ of them in number.”
“Nah, I’m a traveler,” he paused. And added in a moment of inspiration, “A circus traveler.”
“A traveler?” echoed Walter. “Circus traveler?” He eyed Lavi’s eye-patch. “A freak show?”
“Walter!” Jan chastised his companion.
Lavi had nearly forgotten the anonymity that casual attire could give. He snaked a hand to touch his covered eye. “Close. But this eye is not ugly enough to fit a freak show,” he grinned ruefully. “I’m a clown’s assistant.”
“Now that’s interestin’,” said Jan. “Ya’ come ‘ere to work after all! Where and when is the show? We’ll close our shops and move our bums to see.”
“Nah, we don’t come here to work. We’re on vacation, you see,” Lavi waved his hand.
The bulky Jan looked a bit crestfallen. It’s a funny look. Like someone just told big papa bear his toy was not up for grasp.
“So, what it’ll be, Doug?” Alvin spoke up again. He had finished polishing the watch. The polishing kit, back in its tin box, now lay under the table. His watch was nowhere to be seen.
“Pardon?” Lavi questioned.
“Card game,” Walter supplied with a grin.
Lavi shook his head. “Gee, you guys are insistent huh? I don’t really play cards.”
“Bullshit,” Alvin contradicted. “Clowns are card sharks.”
“I’m only an assistant,” Lavi said.
“That’s as good for me. We can teach ya’. Ya’ don’t look like havin’ anythin’ to do.” Jan nudged him by the elbow.
He could see no way out of the situation. Maybe Crowley was caught by this kind of persuasion too that one time on the train.
“Alright,” said Lavi. The least he could do was humor them. “Bring it on.”
***
By the end of the day, as the sun started to spread red and orange over the sky, tainting the cityscape in the color of rust, Lavi walked out of the café.
He had learned later that Jan owned the place. It had once been a dilapidated old tavern, given a new chance of life after he bought it. The establishment had come to be known simply by the name of its proprietor over the years, becoming somewhat a neighborhood gathering place.
He checked the road for the sign of the Finder before lopping back the way he came, to the dock worker’s island where he stayed.
Walking along the bay where many shop fronts and stalls lined the street, unexpectedly, his eyes caught a familiar back among many people milling about the market. He quickened his pace, stepping right and left through the crowds, trying to catch up with Walker.
“Walker,” he called out.
“Hey, watch it young man,” a lady bumped into him.
“Sorry ma’am,” -- he slunk off the lady without looking back -- “Walker!”
The Noah’s back sank further, and further away.
“Walker!” he shouted.
Walker didn’t appear to hear him. The noise level was nearly deafening with conversations buzzing all around them. It almost looked like half the people of the neighborhood poured out from their homes for an evening at the market place.
He was about to give up, and kept back to his initial pace, when he saw something reflecting golden light drifted over the sea of heads. It was the golden Golem, Timcampy, wafting over to him happily under the lengthening shadows. Its tiny wings beat the air fervently, catching some people’s attention, evoking minor ruckus at its wake.
There was a chance Toma -- and God knew who else -- was among the bustling crowd. It would do no good for their laying low state, attracting curiosities like this. He shoved the people aside, wading his way to Tim as fast as he can.
He caught the golem between his hands and nearly fell face first against the gravel when he was suddenly out of the crowd. He caught himself right before he lost his balance, grasping Tim hard in his hands.
“Aw, that was close,” Lavi uttered. He shifted his attention to the Golem, opening his hands. “Hey, Tim, you okay? Sorry.”
Tim wiggled his wings, a bit rumpled at both ends where he had grabbed a bit too tight, looking, as much as its nonexistent face could convey, very much angry. It bit Lavi’s thumb vengefully.
“Ouch, Tim, I’m sorry!”
The teeth that sank into his skin were razor sharp. And it would have bitten off a small chunk if not for Walker’s timely interruption.
“Tim, he didn’t mean it.”
Hearing its master’s words, the Golem let his thumb off dejectedly. It bared its ugly small teeth, glittering in the color of his blood, before flying off of his hand.
“You alright?” the Noah asked.
Lavi tilted his head and he almost lost his balance again as he saw the amused smile in the other man’s face, the glow of nearby street lamps illuminating the distinct lines of his cursed mark.
“I-I’m fine,” he replied.
“We’ll see to that once we’re home. Come on.”
Lavi held his breath and wondered at the other’s choice of word -- home? Walker turned around, starting a leisure pace with both his hands disappearing into his pockets.
Lavi blinked once and shook his head. His shadow cut across the cobbles between them as he flanked the man, strolling away into the last glimmer of sunset.
***
“I know you,” the Noah said.
Lavi, supposedly calmer now after the repeat of the same incident several times, responded with a hitched breath. Suddenly not calm at all, because this time, instead of staring off at nothing and emitting ominous aura before subsiding back into Allen, the ‘creature’ had spoken.
The Noah smiled -- a cordial smile that was perfectly, wrongly Allen. Fuck, his mind supplied.
Lavi wondered, really, really wondered. Whywhywhy did the Noah choose to appear before him? Never when Link was around (the inspector was, in fact, twenty feet down the chasm, probably suffering from concussion and fractures and lost of consciousness after a long fall and quite a sack from the Akuma). Not when Lenalee, or Kanda, or the others were with them.
“You are Lavi.”
“What of it?” A hint of challenge in his question, but it was mostly for show; his mind was screaming fuckfuckfuck, only a short distance away from hyperventilating. His hand snaked to the holster at his hip, seeking the cold and sleek black metal that for once, failed to give him comfort.
The Noah -- he could not bear to call the thing Allen; Walker maybe, not Allen, never Allen -- flickered his eyes to follow the movement of Lavi’s hand. “I won’t kill you.”
“Like I’ll believe you.”
“I won’t kill an Exorcist.”
Lavi grasped the handle of his hammer a bit tighter. “Leave Allen alone.”
“Ah well, unless they are being unnecessarily... stubborn,” Walker amended sweetly. “Although, Lavi, really I betrayed the Earl, remember? You, Bookman Junior, of all people, should know that.”
How could he remember, when his mind was reeling along the line of fuck will Allen ever come back again? Can I take down the Fourteenth by my own? But he’s using Allen’s body!
“…Fuck you. Give Allen back.”
“That’s terribly vulgar,” the Noah paused. A frown marred his face. “I’m Allen Walker, you know. The original one who gave your Allen life.”
Lavi was tongue-tied. He had rehearsed this kind of possibility in his mind countless times, but none of the scenarios fit this.
And fuck, his side hurt like hell. Blood had started to pool under the sole of his feet, seeping into the snow. It bled from where at some point in the battle that took place just scant fifteen minutes ago. One of the level fours had flung him over, crashing him hard against protruding rocks, breaking several ribs at once, tearing his skin where it had met sharper surfaces.
Allen was in no better shape, but he had his cape to protect him, at least.
Walker closed the distance between them in four easy steps, the Crown Clown still materialized from the last fight. Lavi freed his hammer from its holster.
***
"At least the wound is clean," Walker muttered as he inspected the gash in Lavi's hand.
Lavi slouched back in his chair. He watched the play of colors in Walker's hair, almost copper in the last light of the sun, feeling like a voyeur. The Noah was hovering over his hand. Their meager medical supplies and warm water ready on the nightstand.
It was too much.
"I've been stabbed, sliced, and hurt in many imaginative ways. Timcampy can hardly harm me," Lavi supplied.
Walker eyed him in askance. "Once, when Cross and I were in India, Timcampy killed a man by inflicting tetanus on him. So, stuff that manly pride of yours and let me take care of it."
"I'm not--" Lavi's reply was cut off by pain as Walker applied iodine on the cut. He cringed.
"There, all done."
***
Lavi was not sure if he should bring it up. He wondered if Allen knew, if he ever questioned the gap in his memory, if he asked himself why his shoulders and back were bleeding, not from the impact against rocks or the Akuma's claws, but from something blunt, something suspiciously resembling Lavi's innocence.
He tried one night.
They were alone. The two who hadn't been released by matron. Of the five people that went out for the mission, Lavi and Allen came back with the worst injuries.
"How much do you remember of our last sojourn with the Akuma?" Lavi asked. He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling as darkness settled over them. Allen was on his own bed, not far from Lavi’s. The only illumination came from a candle that sat between them on the nightstand.
At first, Allen was silent. He dragged it so long that Lavi was beginning to think the boy was asleep.
"Enough," came the reply. It was sufficiently vague that Lavi was clear on the meaning.
Darkness dragged words out of someone. Sometimes, things that couldn't be said in daylight came out under the blanket of the night.
"I wish--" Lavi said and then halted, thinking of the words over before he spoke again, “I wish it wasn't me."
"It couldn't be anyone else," Allen said, his voice barely a whisper. Allen might have just as well punched Lavi in the gut.
A muscle tightened in Lavi's face as he sensed Allen moved away from his own bed to climb into Lavi's. The mattress dipped under their combined weight.
"Don't worry, Lavi," Allen started again with the slightest shake of his head. He seemed to contemplate Lavi's expression before he continued. "If there's someone it wouldn't hurt, it is you."
***
The day was well past noon, and the sickly light of the overcast sky spilled over the windless water below the quay. Lavi was filling his journal. His fingers smudged by dark ink.
He wrote about the woman he saw yesterday. She was a net weaver, making small talk with him as the nets knotted over her hands like silver rings. He inserted the part where he met Jan again. The food was surprisingly good at Jan’s and the card game killed the time.
He paused over the part where Walker stepped into the café to join them. He wrote ‘Walker’ and changed his mind, crossing the name three times.
His hand ached where the wound was not quite healing yet. Lavi closed his journal. He was finished for the day.
***
Lavi woke up on the floor. It was storming hard outside. Wind and rain battered their tiny shack. The thin wall elicited worrisome rattles.
He did not remember sleeping on the floor, so he must have fallen sometime during his nightmare; the remnant of his dream was still vivid in his mind. In it, he was fastened to the earth with golden chains around his limbs. Bookman was hovering upside down over him, dead, hanging by his feet chained to the ceiling.
It took him a second to remember how to breathe. It always did after he woke up from such a dream.
It took him another ten seconds to realize Walker was awake, sitting on his bed. Lavi climbed back into his own bed. His back was hurt from the fall, protesting as he clawed his way up.
“Can’t sleep?” Lavi asked.
He couldn’t be sure of the expression on Walker’s face, especially when the candlelight swayed as it was, creating moving shadows on Walker’s skin -- but it looked like he was smiling. The shadows painted a sad and melancholic impression of upturned lips on his face -- beautiful in his borrowed body.
“We used to work together,” he said simply, like he knew Lavi would get it.
Lavi didn’t ask for confirmation of who Walker was talking about. He’d been calling for Panda in his dream, his lips spilling the words into waking world without his consent. Lavi shuddered almost invisibly, the slight twitch of his shoulders. Like it was sacrilege for anyone to mention Bookman, enough to make him uncomfortable. His tone was intentionally dry when he replied, “Really? Did he use to boss you around too?”
Walker snorted. “Not me. A friend,” he said vaguely.
“And you tell me now, why?”
“Ever heard of making a conversation?” Walker shrugged. Avoidant, Lavi observed.
“Hardly a small talk, and at this hour,” Lavi told him. He really wished he could ask more, but Walker had put a lid to that question even before he asked it.
“Go back to sleep,” Walker said. There was definitely a smile on his face this time.
***
“Where are you going?” Lavi shouted, a little out of breath from his run.
Allen stopped in his track.
“Go back, Lavi,” he hissed without turning his back.
Lavi swallowed hard and clenched his hands. He was so angry that his eye was stinging. He didn’t sign up for this -- wait, fuck, what was he saying? He signed up for this, all of this, when he discarded his name and took up the Bookman apprentice’s cloak. This came with the pseudo-omniscient mojo the Bookmans wrapped around their persons, came with enlisting themselves to fight in a war to save humanity. He needed to decide -- choose, now, or keep his peace forever.
“No. No, you’re not going, unless I’m going with you,” Lavi said, final.
Something inside his chest was breaking, like an iceberg tipping down from a tall mountain, and he was powerless to stop it.
And that was how it began.
***
Emma had finished her day’s netting; a pile of silver nets had risen up neatly beside her, the knots tight and small, catching light as she dropped the last trail of her rope on the pile.
“Done for today,” she announced, quite pleased at her result, anticipating the coins that the Foreman would press into her hands.
Lavi looked down at his own meager pile, grey and tangled beside his foot.
Emma favored him with a pitying look. “Young man, don’t look so gloom. Ya’ did well for a first try.”
Lavi shrugged and dismissed his task. In the end, the Foreman paid him two copper coins, mumbling about wasting good ropes. He probably would not be allowed to touch any rope the next day.
He walked with Emma, passing a line of stalls selling dried herrings. Sailors perambulated about the street, carrying heavy crates, or standing around and chatting boisterously. The smell of the sea was weaker here, eclipsed by putrid odor of fish and unwashed body.
“Thank ya’ for sitting with me today. Would be lonely and boring, otherwise,” Emma told him.
In his own boredom, Lavi had sought solace in talking and telling several folk-stories to her, watching the play of expression on her face. She loved stories, but words on paper eluded her, she had said to him.
“Anytime,” Lavi replied, and paused in his step.
Walker was standing at the far side of the street, hanging out with a burly man, casually talking with the stranger with a smile. Lavi automatically catalogued the distance between the two men. Not sure why it was important, or, why he cared.
He averted his eye to the side, only to be accosted with Emma’s stare, whose loose brown hair curled tightly around a face plump and red with sun. There was a question in her eyes.
Lavi turned away, resuming his steps, veering off at an intersection to avoid Walker. Coward. Coward and stupid, a small voice in his mind mocked him.
Emma was right at his side, still following him. They barely knew each other; only three days since he made acquaintance with her, so when she asked -- “Ya’ look sad just now. Is it ‘cause of that lad with white hair?” -- he was not so inclined to answer. Discussing Walker, with anyone, under the daylight was the last thing he had in his agenda today.
It’s not helping that he was sorely tempted to walk over to Walker and the sailor, to punch that big man in the face. Anger simmered under his skin, barely contained.
“Are ya’ okay?”
“Shut up,” Lavi hissed in a knee-jerk fashion, before realizing what he’d said. Emma deserved better than his childish tantrum. “Sorry. That was. That -- I know him.”
“Obviously,” Emma replied, nonplussed.
Lavi tamped down the urge to clear his throat. “He did something to someone I care about. Seeing him again makes me angry, that’s all.”
A not lie. His stomach clenched uncomfortably, telling someone, even in half-truth was painful.
***
“We envy you,” said Walker out of the blue.
The ‘we’ was something pointed -- something that indicated a whole race. He lowered his book to his lap. He’d felt Walker’s eyes on him ever since Lavi came home to find Walker already there, burning two holes in his back all evening.
He waited, prompting Walker to say more by his silence.
“God loved us, at first, chose us. But, all the same, He crushed our souls when He cursed us. We envy you of what you still have,” Walker continued.
Lavi arched his eyebrows, his mind running over many responds. Wryly, he settled with, “What is this? You want to compare notes?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, go on, okay. Start.” Lavi shrugged, feeling like an asshole, but hardly care enough to dial down his more sarcastic side at this point. No one to see him but Walker. No pretense there.
Walker smiled, like he had expected this behavior from Lavi, like he could fucking read Lavi’s mind -- maybe Walker really could, for all Lavi fucking knew, being cursed semi-human and all that jazz. “We are empty. We are unwanted children who only know how to rail against their existence after He cursed us. We can exist even without human vessels, like Rhode has. Nevertheless, we reside in humans because we like to remember how it is to be a human.”
“And still you kill us. It must be quite a blast as far as revenge go.”
Walker stood from his perch and walked over to Lavi, insinuating himself beside him, sitting on Lavi’s bed. Outside, Lavi could hear the crash of waves, and recalled a folk-story he told Emma, that waves were a tempest of thousands of souls making their useless attempt to climb over rocks, to come back to human domain.
He felt a little like those souls, lost and desperate.
“You, humans, are beautiful,” Walker whispered sweetly. “Your souls are so fragile, so black, so damned.”
Lavi instinctively jerked out of reach when Walker lifted a hand to touch his face.
“Shh. It’s alright,” Walker assured him. “I won’t hurt you.”
No, Walker wouldn’t hurt him. He’d painfully known that. It was not fear that made him flinch.
“Stop it.”
“Why?”
“You... Your mixed signal is horrible. Stop it. Stop pretending you’re human, and then revert back again to say something creepy and do something like this.”
“I am a human, Lavi, as long as Allen is. He loves you, so do I. Seeing you torturing yourself over him pains me.”
Walker tried again, closing in to trail the back of his hand along Lavi’s jaw line. This time, Lavi didn’t move away.
The touch burned, like something forbidden, something sinful, something he absolutely wanted.
Lavi closed his eyes and breathed out.
He didn't feel like falling anymore. He already had, and hard.
***
Neah, you little shit, meet me at Ming’s.
C.M.
FIN
Warnings: Sacrilege, language
Beta: nherizu. She has worked hard for her own gift. :P
Summary: Following someone is not easy.
Read on AO3.
For nherizu and sheilaluv. Thank you, guys, for being fab friends.
This is a pain to write. The first sentence was put to paper back in 2009, when D.Gray-man was not as complicated and as plagued by subplots as now, therefore, some explanations are not canon accurate.
Stranger on the Shore
"The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it.”
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum.
In Amsterdam, Walker led Lavi through a red light district within the heart of the city, where painted signs advertised sexual aids and live sex shows that left nothing for the imagination. They walked down a smaller alley, until they reached an open door of a dilapidated apartment. Through the door and up a narrow staircase, they came to a small landing, where an Asian man sat on a wooden chair in front of another doorway.
The man stood up as he noticed their approach. He talked with a heavily accented Dutch, “What business do you have here?”
Walker slunk up to the man’s side to whisper something in his ear. The man showed immediate reaction. His feature visibly became several shades paler as he took a faltering step back.
“W-wait here, I’ll inform Da Sao about your visit,” he stuttered out before scurrying off, vanishing behind laced curtain that substituted a door.
Walker followed him, paying no heed to the man’s words. Lavi, left alone and uncertain of what to do, decided to trace Walker’s steps. He parted the curtain and walked inside.
He looked past Walker’s shoulder. There were about a dozen men and women in the small, gloomy room; most of them lying on cots and the rest sitting sprawled on the floor. The air was pungent with strangely saccharine smell coming from the long pipes they were smoking. None of them paid attention to the newcomers, lost in their haze.
Walker turned his head a fraction to address Lavi.
“Lavi, wait here,” he said, before ambling to the back of the room, avoiding some people sprawling along the wall, and disappearing behind a door.
Lavi stood stupefied by the lethargic activities around him. It was an opium den. He had heard of, read of places like this, but never would he imagine finding one under the daylight. How come Walker had contacts in here, would be a mystery he wanted to solve.
As the swirling wisp of smoke began to affect him, tugging at the base of his mood, trying to pull him into the lethargic haze as well, Walker came out from the door; behind him, was an old lady. They spoke softly, too quiet to carry across the room, yet somehow distinct enough for Lavi to catch the end of each word, although, they made no sense to him.
Their conversation ceased as they reached Lavi. Walker flicked a glance in the old lady’s direction, and began again, in perfect Dutch (a language Lavi never associated with Allen), “He is the Bookman Junior.”
The old lady settled her eyes on Lavi. She had a pair of disturbingly clear, jet black eyes, incongruous in the sea of wilted skin of her face. Her long hair, although in the same color as Walker who was standing beside her, was lusterless and dull; the vibrant red Chinese robe that she wore contrasted with her aged skin.
“Oh yes,” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard of Yao taking an apprentice again! Never imagined I would meet said apprentice one day.”
Lavi was more than a little disturbed at the direct reference to Bookman by a name he never heard of, nevertheless, he offered the old lady a smile.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
She returned his smile, the wrinkles across her face creasing deeper. “How is Yao? It’s been so long since the last time I saw him, perhaps,” she paused. “Perhaps twenty years, I’m not sure, maybe longer.”
“My master is fine,” Lavi replied. “I’ll tell him a beautiful lady is asking after him.”
“Oh my,” the woman laughed, the humor clear in her ageless eyes. “I might be beautiful in my younger days, with fair share of handsome and capable men asking for my hand, but now, as you see, time is inescapable. Although, it’d be nice if you could tell Yao that I’ve been missing him all these years.”
All this she told him with a raspy voice that betrayed her age, but also hinting in it the vitality of a loquacious girl. Lavi could only imagine the kind of past Panda had had with her.
“I think we should go,” Walker interrupted.
“Yeah, let’s.” Lavi nodded.
After bidding their goodbyes to the lady (Ming, she had insisted), they clambered back out and down the stairs.
“Cross will come to this city,” Walker said once they were outside, tracing back their steps to the alley, “I’m going to stay here.”
Lavi paid his companion a lingering glance that spoke far more than he let on. “I’ll stay too,” he said.
***
It was an overcast, windy afternoon, the second month of their travel, when Lavi first set foot on the island; a long sliver of land artificially created by dumping sand and earth between dock and quays that could only be reached by crossing draw-bridges. The houses, overshadowed by tall warehouses along the quays on the main land, were badly rundown. They were made of stones and woods, cramped so close together that the occupants must share the limited space of their lawns with their neighbors.
The alleys were gloomy even in the afternoon, with the sun blocked by corrugated iron roofs protruding hazardously, overlaying each other. Through one of the alleys, Walker led him to a tiny shack tucked away between two larger, equally rundown buildings.
Earlier, after visiting the old lady down at the red light district, Walker had miraculously procured a key from another one of his contact; this time, an old sailor who lived by the Zuiderzee bay. Lavi tried not to think too much of these contacts of Walker’s and how they came to, but he made a mental note of them nonetheless. The information might be necessary in the future. (Now, that, was an understatement. He made a mental note of everything).
They stood before a door with two windows flanking it -- so grimy that they could not see through the glass pane from outside.
It went without saying: this was where they would stay.
***
It scared the hell out of him, the first time it happened.
It was a quiet night at the beginning of winter. The recreation room was almost empty, save the last three who were sleeping soundly at one corner of the room, while the fire was dimming down to the last ember in the fireplace.
Link was in deep slumber, sprawled across a sofa, too tired to even maintain his usual light sleep after a long mission. Adjacent to him, separated by a low coffee table, was another sofa with the two occupants snoring lightly. On the table was a deck of cards, scattered across in a poker game; three set of hands laid open, one indicating a royal flush.
In the course of the night, after receiving news of Lenalee’s condition, who had been pummeled by a level three in the mission she had gone to with the three of them, they were washed by relief, and immediately relaxed, falling asleep on the couch as their exhaustion suddenly bearing down on them.
It was Lavi who stirred first as the temperature began to drop; the load on his shoulder was an anchor, which slowly chained him back into the waking world. It took him several minutes to clear the web of sleep from his mind; the image of his dream still hovered behind his eyes. It had not been a pleasant dream at all.
And then, Allen stirred. He lifted his head from Lavi’s shoulder, slowly unraveling his own web of sleep.
“Hey, Allen,” Lavi mumbled groggily. He shifted a little to the side, rolled his shoulder to work the circulation back. “You should go back to your room.”
He glanced at the white haired boy. The light from a chandelier at the middle of the room, the last one that had not been turned off, cast dim illumination over them.
Allen turned his face slowly. A sudden chill ran down Lavi’s spine as Allen locked eyes with him.
The person who faced him was not Allen at all.
***
Lavi had a hard time imagining how he would pass his days here, in the small room, with Walker. It had been a mere whim that prompted him to follow the Noah. He was chasing a pipe dream, and it would later get back at him for choosing this over his future, his responsibility, and Panda (from whom he owed all his knowledge, his life).
But it was not a mere Noah he was following. It was Allen.
Lavi waited for the question. Why are you following me? Why are you so persistent? He imagined Walker would ask.
He had stocked an answer -- answers, really, as transient as the question itself. Because you are using Allen’s body, he’d say.
Nevertheless, even he knew that it was not enough answer. He was not fluent in interpreting his own feeling -- so new at it. All this time, he thought himself better than the fools who obsessed over each other and died in the name of something as crazy as love.
He looked over to the Noah from his perch at the window.
Walker was sitting on his own bed; eyes closed and shoulder slumped. Timcampy was resting on his lap. The Noah was not sleeping, Lavi could tell, because he’d seen Walker do this a lot. Sitting with his eyes closed, for a long time, as if trying to meditate, or thinking over something, or maybe, and this sounded the most plausible for Lavi, remembering. The Noah often got a far off look in his eyes in their travel, stopping his track over something trivial: a gable stone depicting an obscure image in someone’s door, a fruit stand at the road side market, two children playing tags. The look -- pensive and deep set -- left a strong imprint in his perfect memory.
Perhaps, the reason why he followed Walker, Lavi tested again, was the unvoiced wish within him that strongly wanted Allen to show up, however small the chance was.
Grey eyes opened to fix right at his. The simple movement took Lavi off guard. He was caught staring at Walker openly. Lavi flickered his eye to the open sea beyond the window.
Reality reared its head every time he looked into Walker’s eyes. The grey eyes were the same shape, the same color as Allen’s, but it weren’t Allen’s. They were dead and empty.
“What are we going to do from here on?” Lavi asked, simply just to break the silence before it got unbearable.
The Noah’s eyes were still on him. “We wait.”
Wind lapped against Lavi’s face, playing with his red locks. “Huh. That’s boring.”
“You can take a look around the town.”
“I guess I will,” Lavi licked his lips. They were dry and salty.
***
There was a small window in the one room shack they shared. It opened to the ocean. Glittering blue surface stretched far into the horizon, dotted by the swells of boats and ships. If there was something that could lift the curse off this woebegone old shack, it was the vast sky over the water all around, the palpable wind, the salty air, the tang of rust hinting it.
Lavi spent most of the time inside by this window. He drew a chair -- rotten wood, likewise with the rest of the furniture -- and sat beside it. He read by daylight, recorded his travel and random event (an old habit that he couldn’t quite get rid of, even though he knew Panda would most likely beat him to a bloody pulp and leave him rot on the road side if he ever met him again), and sometimes, he simply stared out into the ocean, watching the dock workers loading barrels of coffee, chocolate, butter, sugar, and various things into multiple-masted ships, as a seagull dove down to snatch a fish, or as the cloud gathered into a big mass of rain cloud.
By day, Walker was rarely there. The Noah would leave with Timcampy as soon as the sun was up, and would be back right before the twilight set in. Lavi had no idea where the man had gone off during the day, and he never asked.
By night, they slept separately on the two available beds, each at one side of the wall, the window in between them. He’d been having problems sleeping at night, not because the bed was creaky and the wood supporting it threatened to collapse every time he moved, not because the stain in the ceiling looked like an eye, and not because the sound of crashing waves, nor the wind rattling the shack. It was because of his dreams. Ever since he arrived here, he had dreamt of many things, none of them was pleasant.
He stayed awake, mostly -- recalling in his mind Mark Twain’s description of the children of Western America lying in bed and counting the whistle of transcontinental train going by the night. He counted the crash of waves, one by one as they hit the shores, until he could not count anymore and sleep washed over him, too tired to dream, feeling like a child all over again.
***
Walker seemed to know his way very well in the city. He led Lavi around with determined and knowing steps, taking him around to meet his contacts, explaining to him the rough outline of the city, where to find what, which area he should not visit to avoid Black Order’s spies.
Once, as he walked around the city, too bored to stay inside all day, Lavi nearly bumped into Toma, the Finder. It was fortunate that Black Order’s disciples were required to wear distinct and eye catching attire on. Otherwise, he would not have found Toma before the man found him.
He quickly rounded a corner, darting out of the other man’s line of sight, and disappeared into a door of a nearby café.
“Hey! You, eye-patch over there,” someone called him from one corner of the café.
Looking up for the source, he could see a bald middle aged man waved him over to his table. The tiny place was packed full of patron, with every table occupied by three or four men, pursuing card games, or simply enjoying their midday meal.
Lavi pointed to himself.
The man grunted an affirmation. “Needin’ a seat, yeah? Come ‘ere before someone nabs it.”
He walked down the aisle and slid to the indicated chair beside the man, thanking him in the process. There were two others sitting at the table, making him the fourth man.
“Nice number for a nice game, don’t you say?” a younger man at the end of the table said, his hair was the color of rust brown, his chin unshaved.
Lavi eyed the table in front of him. Above the carpetry that covered the table -- many here seemed to do this a lot, a carpet over the table, instead of cloth -- was a deck of card, untouched in the middle of the flat surface. He hitched an eyebrow in doubt, taking care to show the expression.
The first man that had invited him over to their table laughed. His large hand, bulky and hairy which somewhat reminded Lavi of a gorilla’s, patted Lavi hard on the back; he said, “Don’t scare the young un’, you hooligans.”
“No joke? I think you are the one who scares him, Jan,” said another young man adjacent to Lavi. He was preoccupied with polishing a pocket watch. He gave Lavi a once over. “I’m Alvin. The brute over there is Jan. This one is Walter,” -- the one dubbed Walter, the man with unshaved chin, flashed a lopsided grin -- “Never seen you around before. Are you new here?”
“I’m Doug,” Lavi replied offhandedly. “Yeah, you could put it that way.”
Jan slammed his hand against the table, rattling it all around. “Good! That beckons for even greater calls of conviviality. Are ya’ American coming here to work too young un’? There seems to be increasin’ of them in number.”
“Nah, I’m a traveler,” he paused. And added in a moment of inspiration, “A circus traveler.”
“A traveler?” echoed Walter. “Circus traveler?” He eyed Lavi’s eye-patch. “A freak show?”
“Walter!” Jan chastised his companion.
Lavi had nearly forgotten the anonymity that casual attire could give. He snaked a hand to touch his covered eye. “Close. But this eye is not ugly enough to fit a freak show,” he grinned ruefully. “I’m a clown’s assistant.”
“Now that’s interestin’,” said Jan. “Ya’ come ‘ere to work after all! Where and when is the show? We’ll close our shops and move our bums to see.”
“Nah, we don’t come here to work. We’re on vacation, you see,” Lavi waved his hand.
The bulky Jan looked a bit crestfallen. It’s a funny look. Like someone just told big papa bear his toy was not up for grasp.
“So, what it’ll be, Doug?” Alvin spoke up again. He had finished polishing the watch. The polishing kit, back in its tin box, now lay under the table. His watch was nowhere to be seen.
“Pardon?” Lavi questioned.
“Card game,” Walter supplied with a grin.
Lavi shook his head. “Gee, you guys are insistent huh? I don’t really play cards.”
“Bullshit,” Alvin contradicted. “Clowns are card sharks.”
“I’m only an assistant,” Lavi said.
“That’s as good for me. We can teach ya’. Ya’ don’t look like havin’ anythin’ to do.” Jan nudged him by the elbow.
He could see no way out of the situation. Maybe Crowley was caught by this kind of persuasion too that one time on the train.
“Alright,” said Lavi. The least he could do was humor them. “Bring it on.”
***
By the end of the day, as the sun started to spread red and orange over the sky, tainting the cityscape in the color of rust, Lavi walked out of the café.
He had learned later that Jan owned the place. It had once been a dilapidated old tavern, given a new chance of life after he bought it. The establishment had come to be known simply by the name of its proprietor over the years, becoming somewhat a neighborhood gathering place.
He checked the road for the sign of the Finder before lopping back the way he came, to the dock worker’s island where he stayed.
Walking along the bay where many shop fronts and stalls lined the street, unexpectedly, his eyes caught a familiar back among many people milling about the market. He quickened his pace, stepping right and left through the crowds, trying to catch up with Walker.
“Walker,” he called out.
“Hey, watch it young man,” a lady bumped into him.
“Sorry ma’am,” -- he slunk off the lady without looking back -- “Walker!”
The Noah’s back sank further, and further away.
“Walker!” he shouted.
Walker didn’t appear to hear him. The noise level was nearly deafening with conversations buzzing all around them. It almost looked like half the people of the neighborhood poured out from their homes for an evening at the market place.
He was about to give up, and kept back to his initial pace, when he saw something reflecting golden light drifted over the sea of heads. It was the golden Golem, Timcampy, wafting over to him happily under the lengthening shadows. Its tiny wings beat the air fervently, catching some people’s attention, evoking minor ruckus at its wake.
There was a chance Toma -- and God knew who else -- was among the bustling crowd. It would do no good for their laying low state, attracting curiosities like this. He shoved the people aside, wading his way to Tim as fast as he can.
He caught the golem between his hands and nearly fell face first against the gravel when he was suddenly out of the crowd. He caught himself right before he lost his balance, grasping Tim hard in his hands.
“Aw, that was close,” Lavi uttered. He shifted his attention to the Golem, opening his hands. “Hey, Tim, you okay? Sorry.”
Tim wiggled his wings, a bit rumpled at both ends where he had grabbed a bit too tight, looking, as much as its nonexistent face could convey, very much angry. It bit Lavi’s thumb vengefully.
“Ouch, Tim, I’m sorry!”
The teeth that sank into his skin were razor sharp. And it would have bitten off a small chunk if not for Walker’s timely interruption.
“Tim, he didn’t mean it.”
Hearing its master’s words, the Golem let his thumb off dejectedly. It bared its ugly small teeth, glittering in the color of his blood, before flying off of his hand.
“You alright?” the Noah asked.
Lavi tilted his head and he almost lost his balance again as he saw the amused smile in the other man’s face, the glow of nearby street lamps illuminating the distinct lines of his cursed mark.
“I-I’m fine,” he replied.
“We’ll see to that once we’re home. Come on.”
Lavi held his breath and wondered at the other’s choice of word -- home? Walker turned around, starting a leisure pace with both his hands disappearing into his pockets.
Lavi blinked once and shook his head. His shadow cut across the cobbles between them as he flanked the man, strolling away into the last glimmer of sunset.
***
“I know you,” the Noah said.
Lavi, supposedly calmer now after the repeat of the same incident several times, responded with a hitched breath. Suddenly not calm at all, because this time, instead of staring off at nothing and emitting ominous aura before subsiding back into Allen, the ‘creature’ had spoken.
The Noah smiled -- a cordial smile that was perfectly, wrongly Allen. Fuck, his mind supplied.
Lavi wondered, really, really wondered. Whywhywhy did the Noah choose to appear before him? Never when Link was around (the inspector was, in fact, twenty feet down the chasm, probably suffering from concussion and fractures and lost of consciousness after a long fall and quite a sack from the Akuma). Not when Lenalee, or Kanda, or the others were with them.
“You are Lavi.”
“What of it?” A hint of challenge in his question, but it was mostly for show; his mind was screaming fuckfuckfuck, only a short distance away from hyperventilating. His hand snaked to the holster at his hip, seeking the cold and sleek black metal that for once, failed to give him comfort.
The Noah -- he could not bear to call the thing Allen; Walker maybe, not Allen, never Allen -- flickered his eyes to follow the movement of Lavi’s hand. “I won’t kill you.”
“Like I’ll believe you.”
“I won’t kill an Exorcist.”
Lavi grasped the handle of his hammer a bit tighter. “Leave Allen alone.”
“Ah well, unless they are being unnecessarily... stubborn,” Walker amended sweetly. “Although, Lavi, really I betrayed the Earl, remember? You, Bookman Junior, of all people, should know that.”
How could he remember, when his mind was reeling along the line of fuck will Allen ever come back again? Can I take down the Fourteenth by my own? But he’s using Allen’s body!
“…Fuck you. Give Allen back.”
“That’s terribly vulgar,” the Noah paused. A frown marred his face. “I’m Allen Walker, you know. The original one who gave your Allen life.”
Lavi was tongue-tied. He had rehearsed this kind of possibility in his mind countless times, but none of the scenarios fit this.
And fuck, his side hurt like hell. Blood had started to pool under the sole of his feet, seeping into the snow. It bled from where at some point in the battle that took place just scant fifteen minutes ago. One of the level fours had flung him over, crashing him hard against protruding rocks, breaking several ribs at once, tearing his skin where it had met sharper surfaces.
Allen was in no better shape, but he had his cape to protect him, at least.
Walker closed the distance between them in four easy steps, the Crown Clown still materialized from the last fight. Lavi freed his hammer from its holster.
***
"At least the wound is clean," Walker muttered as he inspected the gash in Lavi's hand.
Lavi slouched back in his chair. He watched the play of colors in Walker's hair, almost copper in the last light of the sun, feeling like a voyeur. The Noah was hovering over his hand. Their meager medical supplies and warm water ready on the nightstand.
It was too much.
"I've been stabbed, sliced, and hurt in many imaginative ways. Timcampy can hardly harm me," Lavi supplied.
Walker eyed him in askance. "Once, when Cross and I were in India, Timcampy killed a man by inflicting tetanus on him. So, stuff that manly pride of yours and let me take care of it."
"I'm not--" Lavi's reply was cut off by pain as Walker applied iodine on the cut. He cringed.
"There, all done."
***
Lavi was not sure if he should bring it up. He wondered if Allen knew, if he ever questioned the gap in his memory, if he asked himself why his shoulders and back were bleeding, not from the impact against rocks or the Akuma's claws, but from something blunt, something suspiciously resembling Lavi's innocence.
He tried one night.
They were alone. The two who hadn't been released by matron. Of the five people that went out for the mission, Lavi and Allen came back with the worst injuries.
"How much do you remember of our last sojourn with the Akuma?" Lavi asked. He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling as darkness settled over them. Allen was on his own bed, not far from Lavi’s. The only illumination came from a candle that sat between them on the nightstand.
At first, Allen was silent. He dragged it so long that Lavi was beginning to think the boy was asleep.
"Enough," came the reply. It was sufficiently vague that Lavi was clear on the meaning.
Darkness dragged words out of someone. Sometimes, things that couldn't be said in daylight came out under the blanket of the night.
"I wish--" Lavi said and then halted, thinking of the words over before he spoke again, “I wish it wasn't me."
"It couldn't be anyone else," Allen said, his voice barely a whisper. Allen might have just as well punched Lavi in the gut.
A muscle tightened in Lavi's face as he sensed Allen moved away from his own bed to climb into Lavi's. The mattress dipped under their combined weight.
"Don't worry, Lavi," Allen started again with the slightest shake of his head. He seemed to contemplate Lavi's expression before he continued. "If there's someone it wouldn't hurt, it is you."
***
The day was well past noon, and the sickly light of the overcast sky spilled over the windless water below the quay. Lavi was filling his journal. His fingers smudged by dark ink.
He wrote about the woman he saw yesterday. She was a net weaver, making small talk with him as the nets knotted over her hands like silver rings. He inserted the part where he met Jan again. The food was surprisingly good at Jan’s and the card game killed the time.
He paused over the part where Walker stepped into the café to join them. He wrote ‘Walker’ and changed his mind, crossing the name three times.
His hand ached where the wound was not quite healing yet. Lavi closed his journal. He was finished for the day.
***
Lavi woke up on the floor. It was storming hard outside. Wind and rain battered their tiny shack. The thin wall elicited worrisome rattles.
He did not remember sleeping on the floor, so he must have fallen sometime during his nightmare; the remnant of his dream was still vivid in his mind. In it, he was fastened to the earth with golden chains around his limbs. Bookman was hovering upside down over him, dead, hanging by his feet chained to the ceiling.
It took him a second to remember how to breathe. It always did after he woke up from such a dream.
It took him another ten seconds to realize Walker was awake, sitting on his bed. Lavi climbed back into his own bed. His back was hurt from the fall, protesting as he clawed his way up.
“Can’t sleep?” Lavi asked.
He couldn’t be sure of the expression on Walker’s face, especially when the candlelight swayed as it was, creating moving shadows on Walker’s skin -- but it looked like he was smiling. The shadows painted a sad and melancholic impression of upturned lips on his face -- beautiful in his borrowed body.
“We used to work together,” he said simply, like he knew Lavi would get it.
Lavi didn’t ask for confirmation of who Walker was talking about. He’d been calling for Panda in his dream, his lips spilling the words into waking world without his consent. Lavi shuddered almost invisibly, the slight twitch of his shoulders. Like it was sacrilege for anyone to mention Bookman, enough to make him uncomfortable. His tone was intentionally dry when he replied, “Really? Did he use to boss you around too?”
Walker snorted. “Not me. A friend,” he said vaguely.
“And you tell me now, why?”
“Ever heard of making a conversation?” Walker shrugged. Avoidant, Lavi observed.
“Hardly a small talk, and at this hour,” Lavi told him. He really wished he could ask more, but Walker had put a lid to that question even before he asked it.
“Go back to sleep,” Walker said. There was definitely a smile on his face this time.
***
“Where are you going?” Lavi shouted, a little out of breath from his run.
Allen stopped in his track.
“Go back, Lavi,” he hissed without turning his back.
Lavi swallowed hard and clenched his hands. He was so angry that his eye was stinging. He didn’t sign up for this -- wait, fuck, what was he saying? He signed up for this, all of this, when he discarded his name and took up the Bookman apprentice’s cloak. This came with the pseudo-omniscient mojo the Bookmans wrapped around their persons, came with enlisting themselves to fight in a war to save humanity. He needed to decide -- choose, now, or keep his peace forever.
“No. No, you’re not going, unless I’m going with you,” Lavi said, final.
Something inside his chest was breaking, like an iceberg tipping down from a tall mountain, and he was powerless to stop it.
And that was how it began.
***
Emma had finished her day’s netting; a pile of silver nets had risen up neatly beside her, the knots tight and small, catching light as she dropped the last trail of her rope on the pile.
“Done for today,” she announced, quite pleased at her result, anticipating the coins that the Foreman would press into her hands.
Lavi looked down at his own meager pile, grey and tangled beside his foot.
Emma favored him with a pitying look. “Young man, don’t look so gloom. Ya’ did well for a first try.”
Lavi shrugged and dismissed his task. In the end, the Foreman paid him two copper coins, mumbling about wasting good ropes. He probably would not be allowed to touch any rope the next day.
He walked with Emma, passing a line of stalls selling dried herrings. Sailors perambulated about the street, carrying heavy crates, or standing around and chatting boisterously. The smell of the sea was weaker here, eclipsed by putrid odor of fish and unwashed body.
“Thank ya’ for sitting with me today. Would be lonely and boring, otherwise,” Emma told him.
In his own boredom, Lavi had sought solace in talking and telling several folk-stories to her, watching the play of expression on her face. She loved stories, but words on paper eluded her, she had said to him.
“Anytime,” Lavi replied, and paused in his step.
Walker was standing at the far side of the street, hanging out with a burly man, casually talking with the stranger with a smile. Lavi automatically catalogued the distance between the two men. Not sure why it was important, or, why he cared.
He averted his eye to the side, only to be accosted with Emma’s stare, whose loose brown hair curled tightly around a face plump and red with sun. There was a question in her eyes.
Lavi turned away, resuming his steps, veering off at an intersection to avoid Walker. Coward. Coward and stupid, a small voice in his mind mocked him.
Emma was right at his side, still following him. They barely knew each other; only three days since he made acquaintance with her, so when she asked -- “Ya’ look sad just now. Is it ‘cause of that lad with white hair?” -- he was not so inclined to answer. Discussing Walker, with anyone, under the daylight was the last thing he had in his agenda today.
It’s not helping that he was sorely tempted to walk over to Walker and the sailor, to punch that big man in the face. Anger simmered under his skin, barely contained.
“Are ya’ okay?”
“Shut up,” Lavi hissed in a knee-jerk fashion, before realizing what he’d said. Emma deserved better than his childish tantrum. “Sorry. That was. That -- I know him.”
“Obviously,” Emma replied, nonplussed.
Lavi tamped down the urge to clear his throat. “He did something to someone I care about. Seeing him again makes me angry, that’s all.”
A not lie. His stomach clenched uncomfortably, telling someone, even in half-truth was painful.
***
“We envy you,” said Walker out of the blue.
The ‘we’ was something pointed -- something that indicated a whole race. He lowered his book to his lap. He’d felt Walker’s eyes on him ever since Lavi came home to find Walker already there, burning two holes in his back all evening.
He waited, prompting Walker to say more by his silence.
“God loved us, at first, chose us. But, all the same, He crushed our souls when He cursed us. We envy you of what you still have,” Walker continued.
Lavi arched his eyebrows, his mind running over many responds. Wryly, he settled with, “What is this? You want to compare notes?”
“Something like that.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, go on, okay. Start.” Lavi shrugged, feeling like an asshole, but hardly care enough to dial down his more sarcastic side at this point. No one to see him but Walker. No pretense there.
Walker smiled, like he had expected this behavior from Lavi, like he could fucking read Lavi’s mind -- maybe Walker really could, for all Lavi fucking knew, being cursed semi-human and all that jazz. “We are empty. We are unwanted children who only know how to rail against their existence after He cursed us. We can exist even without human vessels, like Rhode has. Nevertheless, we reside in humans because we like to remember how it is to be a human.”
“And still you kill us. It must be quite a blast as far as revenge go.”
Walker stood from his perch and walked over to Lavi, insinuating himself beside him, sitting on Lavi’s bed. Outside, Lavi could hear the crash of waves, and recalled a folk-story he told Emma, that waves were a tempest of thousands of souls making their useless attempt to climb over rocks, to come back to human domain.
He felt a little like those souls, lost and desperate.
“You, humans, are beautiful,” Walker whispered sweetly. “Your souls are so fragile, so black, so damned.”
Lavi instinctively jerked out of reach when Walker lifted a hand to touch his face.
“Shh. It’s alright,” Walker assured him. “I won’t hurt you.”
No, Walker wouldn’t hurt him. He’d painfully known that. It was not fear that made him flinch.
“Stop it.”
“Why?”
“You... Your mixed signal is horrible. Stop it. Stop pretending you’re human, and then revert back again to say something creepy and do something like this.”
“I am a human, Lavi, as long as Allen is. He loves you, so do I. Seeing you torturing yourself over him pains me.”
Walker tried again, closing in to trail the back of his hand along Lavi’s jaw line. This time, Lavi didn’t move away.
The touch burned, like something forbidden, something sinful, something he absolutely wanted.
Lavi closed his eyes and breathed out.
He didn't feel like falling anymore. He already had, and hard.
***
Neah, you little shit, meet me at Ming’s.
C.M.
FIN