[Fic] Paper Planes: Prologue
Title: Paper Planes
Fandom: D.Gray-Man
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): eventual Lavi/Kanda
Summary: Lavi has been sentenced to life in prison after being framed for the murder of his guardian. This is where he meets Yu Kanda, a man who could change his life and potentially prove his innocence.... [AU]
The only thing that Lavi could register at that point was the fiery, scorching stabs that seemed to echo through his head. Every time he moved or blinked or even twitched, the same sickening pain would return. He didn’t even want to open his left eye in fear of letting the jabs flare up again. He wasn’t sure what was wrong-he couldn’t remember anything-but it occurred to him suddenly that he wasn’t somewhere exactly comfortable. If he tried, he could ignore the pain and focus for a split second on the cold, hard surface he was laying on....
Then his neck would move slightly and he would scream because the pain would blaze in his right eye again. It stabbed at the back of his neck, throat, head and racked him to his very core. What happened? Where was he? Questions raced through his pain broken mind, flitting across it long enough to register in his consciousness. Even if he tried, he couldn’t open his right eye. It was literally glued shut with something....
His body felt weak, shaky and cold. He was still wearing clothes, but they felt heavy, bogged down and stiff. What was happening? His mind asked again. A familiar feeling of panic and adrenaline burst through his veins, making his heart skip too many beats and his breathing pick up. Wasn’t anybody there? Couldn’t anyone see him? Where was everybody?
“Help me!” he shouted, voice dry and cracked. His voiced echoed back at him, like a voice taunting him. His own voice was mocking him, telling him with no words that the place he was in was empty. Nobody was there to help him. Just go to sleep, it said. No matter how much you scream, nobody is going to hear you....
If Lavi could endure the stinging pain, he would cry. It all seemed so hopeless. Was he going to die there?
“Help me!” he screamed again, voice taking on a desperate edge-slightly higher, a break in the middle.... “Please...” he whispered. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t remember anything. Why he was there, what happened, where he was before this.... It was such a foreign feeling. He could always remember something, but not... this time.
“Please... help me... please...” he whispered in a sort of feverish mantra to himself, mostly-to keep himself awake. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t die! It was too soon....
“This is him.” A soft voice floated in from somewhere across the echoing room. It was distinctly feminine, but Lavi couldn’t process anything further than that through the pain racking fog that covered his mind. He heard a gravelly grunt next and footsteps drawing closer, closer, closer....
There was a pause and all Lavi could do was whimper. What were they going to do? Were these people here to kill him? The prospect of death shot through him again like an arrow. Panic gripped his heart, squeezing it, making it hard to breathe....
“He’s alive,” the gravelly voice mumbled. “How old?”
“Six.”
Another short pause and... “He’ll do.”
Do? Do for what? What were they going to do to him? “Don’t!” Lavi managed to shout, raising his arms up to shield himself. A dry sob escaped him. He had never felt such fear before in his life. Not that he could remember at the time at least....
“Put your arms down, boy,” the rough-voiced man sighed impatiently. He gripped the red haired boy’s arms and pushed them away from his face. His grip was surprisingly gentle. This tenderness surprised and confused Lavi and he suddenly didn’t know what to do. “You’re injured.”
Lavi couldn’t find his voice. He had questions to ask, but it was like his throat had suddenly closed. It was stuck together with something and he was suddenly awake that he was very thirsty. “H-how badly?” he managed to wheeze past his parched throat.
“You right eye has been completely gouged out. It’s surprising you aren’t dead.”
Lavi’s entire body seemed to seize up. His muscles went stiff and ridged, mind wiping clean. “My eye...?” he breathed out. His eye... was missing...? That meant... what was gluing his eye shut was... blood? What was covering his clothes in the sticky, stiff substance was his own blood?
He couldn’t even scream-couldn’t even think-as his consciousness slipped out of his grasp like water.
---
“What’s your name, boy?”
Lavi’s hands were shaking. His knees were drawn up to his chest, single remaining eye wide and frightened. Thick gauze covered his right, still fresh with pain and tender with raw muscle tissue. He grasped the hot cup of tea like a lifeline under the green blanket that had been draped over him. He flicked his gaze over to the old man that had taken him in. He was wrinkled and short, just barely taller than the six-year-old boy. He had a singular, long tuft of hair jutting up from his bald head like a gray flame. Dark circles surrounded his sunken-in eyes, making him look something like a panda.
The tiny redhead would have laughed if he could find his emotions. They were locked away somewhere, thickly sealed to protect himself from what had happened. Perhaps that was better, he thought-to feel nothing at all instead of enduring the pain of acceptance.
He still couldn’t remember anything about before he woke up on the ground, either. His memories were a blank slate, having been thoroughly wiped clean for some incomprehensible reason. He didn’t know anything about himself, his parents, friends... all he knew was the name that was given to him by... by....
By someone. It wasn’t his parents, he knew that. All he had was a first name. “Lavi... I think,” he murmured, shrinking away from the old man. He was lighting a pipe with practiced ease, weathered hands placing the tip through weathered lips.
“You think?”
“I... can’t quite remember much from before.”
The old man sighed heavily, plumes of smoke swirling through the air before dissipating up above near the low ceiling. “My name is Bookman. Now drink that tea and get some rest. It will help you heal.”
Lavi took a sip and tried not to gag. The tea tasted awful. It was bitter and watery at the same time. It hardly tasted like anything and he didn’t see how in hell it would help him heal any faster. He still obeyed, though. Something inside of him told him not to defy the old panda. Perhaps it was something from before, something that conditioned him not to disobey adults?
He finished it down in a few gulps, glad to have something-even if it did taste like dirt and leaves-to soothe his burning throat.
“From this day on, boy, your name is going to be Bookman Junior,” Bookman rumbled around his pipe.
Lavi stared at the elder. “Can... can I still use my given name?” he asked softly.
Bookman scoffed, shaking his head. There was a drawn-out pause between the two only to be broken by a growled, “If you must.”
---
Lavi tried not to throw up at the sight before him.
Another time, another place, another murder.... The young boy had figured out early on what exactly a Bookman did. In a big city like New York, gangs ruled the dirty streets, coated with dirty blood. It was a Bookman’s job to go from one to the other, undercover, and record and document each gang’s movements for the Bookman Society-the so-called ‘secret police’ of the big city.
Over the years, the redhead had thought that he would get used to the sight of murder and carnage. But even after three years, the sight of blood still made him want to gag. Flashbacks of the day he awoke on the floor three years before flooded back to him. The smell of blood, the sickening pain, the icy coldness that had taken a hold of every limb in his body.... It had taken him a long time just to not to keel over and silently scream when he thought about it.
But now, he could stare at a newly dead body and hardly flinch. At nine-years-old. His stomach may still churn nauseatingly and his palms still sweat, but he no longer showed any outward fear of the act of murder. In his job, he saw it all the time.
“Bullet through the temple. Close range,” the redhead said softly to the elder at his side, only a slight waver to his voice. “It’s definitely Daisya,” he sighed. Even through the dried blood and scattered brain matter, the young boy could make out the light brown hair, the blue eyes now covered in a milky white film.... It pulled something inside of him-something deep and dark and sad. Daisya was hardly older than him.... “I guess they got him first, huh?”
Bookman nodded and grasped Lavi by the shoulder. “We should leave before we’re seen with the body.”
Lavi could only agree.
---
“You still don’t remember anything from before, do you?” Bookman murmured, gnawing on the butt of his cigarette. Central Park was covered in a thin sheet of snow, making it glimmer in a quiet sort of elegance. The lamps were switched on, darkness descending up the park like a thick quilt, pinpricked with silvery stars and pale moonlight. Swatches of orange flickered along the footprint embedded snow from the streetlamps, glistening silver and gold, reminding one of Christmas and New Years and all the good things that were associated with winter....
But Lavi didn’t have time to think of the good things.
He could only see the bitter brutality that the season brought on, same as every other. Instead of shimmering gold, he saw sticky red blood running through the snow like wet, crimson ribbons, staining its symbolic ‘purity’ with cruelty and malice.
“Sorry, Gramps.” Lavi grinned apologetically, burying his face further down into the orange scarf wrapped around his neck. The air was cold that day and it wasn’t like they had anywhere to stay at the moment.... “Six years of my life are still missing somewhere.”
Bookman grunted and kept walking through the dark, quiet park. “Perhaps it is permanent amnesia,” he sighed. “At least you have a knack for remembering important things, Junior.”
Lavi rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets. He wondered suddenly why New York had to be so damn cold in the winter, especially with the drunk crazies wandering around Manhattan at night, begging for a buck or a hit. Coupled with the current chill, Lavi didn’t know how he was supposed to take it.
He turned his eyes back to the street lamps and their cold, yellow glow. He could see the snow gently raining from the sky to float down and join the other flakes accumulating on the ground. He thought of other people-families-at this time of year. They would be getting ready for Christmas, wrapping presents with satin bows and colourful papers; baking hams or turkeys, mashing potatoes and baking crisp, apple pies. He thought how they would curl up together around the gentle, warm glow of the hearth and fire, the soft pop and crackle of wood-and possibly television in this day and age-filling the air.
There were days, even after nearly twelve years of being a Bookman, in which Lavi yearned almost painfully for a normal life. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve the life he had now since he had no recollection of his past. Did he even have parents? Or did they abandon him as a child, leaving him to the men who nearly killed him? Questions floated flightily through the redhead’s mind, only to flit away unanswered. Would he ever have answers? Or would he live his entire life in conjecture, watching people kill and be killed just as Bookman did?
Lavi pulled the orange blanket taut around his body. He didn’t want to think about something like that. He didn’t want to think that he would spend the next endless years of his life on repeat, going from place to place with no hope for the future, only looking at the past. Something must have flickered across his face because Bookman was staring at him with what seemed like concern.
“We have another job,” the old man grumbled. “So wipe that worried look off your face, we’ll be out of the cold soon.”
The redhead smiled with bitter contempt. The only way for them to get out of the cold lately was to get another job. Stuck on repeat....
---
The first thing Lavi could recognize when he woke up was the sharp sting in his cheek. “What the-”
“Get up,” he heard Bookman hiss. Before the redhead could even think of processing what the old panda had said, there were small, yet surprisingly strong, fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulling him out of bed. “We’ve been found out, idiot. I’m not exactly sure how, but we have. They’ll be here in less than three minutes.”
Lavi’s eye widened and his mind blanked. What?! How? They had never been found out before, so... why now of all times? “Gramps, what do you-”
“Shut up and hide,” Bookman snapped, voice taking on a tone of finality. The green-eyed teen immediately shut his mouth and nodded quickly. He had learned by now not to defy the old man when he had made up his mind. Lavi grabbed only a few things that were important to a Bookman-his pen and journals. He had to record what had occurred because it was his job and without that... what was he?
The redhead was pushed with a frustrated sigh into the back of an adjacent closet. “Hey, Gramps, aren’t you coming in, too?” he hissed, holding the door open before Bookman could shut it. He knew he shouldn’t be afraid. Bookman could make it out of anything alive.... So what was this anxious churning in the pit of his stomach?
“No. If they find me, they won’t look as hard for you. You need to carry on the job as Bookman, Junior.”
“What?! No way, Gramps, you make it sound like you’re going to die or something!” There was a sort of frightened panic rising in his voice. He tried to keep it at bay, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of Bookman-the man who was practically a father to him when he never had one-dying was almost too much for him to bear....
“Just keep quiet,” the elder hissed, nearly slamming the door after that.
Lavi had half a mind to reopen the door and give Bookman a piece of his mind. Before he could wrap his fingers around the door handle, though, he heard muffled, hushed voices in the other room. He couldn’t make out who it was, but he knew he heard the rumbling growl of Bookman in there. They sounded argumentative, but reserved, like that of a heated debate.
But the voices soon grew from hushed to raised and angry, snarling at each other like rabid dogs. Lavi wasn’t sure what was going on or what was going to happen and he found that so worrisome that it felt like it was eating away at the pit of his stomach. He stood up, ready to help Bookman in any way he could, hand grappling for the doorknob in the inky darkness.
And that was when he heard the gunshots.
Fandom: D.Gray-Man
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): eventual Lavi/Kanda
Summary: Lavi has been sentenced to life in prison after being framed for the murder of his guardian. This is where he meets Yu Kanda, a man who could change his life and potentially prove his innocence.... [AU]
The only thing that Lavi could register at that point was the fiery, scorching stabs that seemed to echo through his head. Every time he moved or blinked or even twitched, the same sickening pain would return. He didn’t even want to open his left eye in fear of letting the jabs flare up again. He wasn’t sure what was wrong-he couldn’t remember anything-but it occurred to him suddenly that he wasn’t somewhere exactly comfortable. If he tried, he could ignore the pain and focus for a split second on the cold, hard surface he was laying on....
Then his neck would move slightly and he would scream because the pain would blaze in his right eye again. It stabbed at the back of his neck, throat, head and racked him to his very core. What happened? Where was he? Questions raced through his pain broken mind, flitting across it long enough to register in his consciousness. Even if he tried, he couldn’t open his right eye. It was literally glued shut with something....
His body felt weak, shaky and cold. He was still wearing clothes, but they felt heavy, bogged down and stiff. What was happening? His mind asked again. A familiar feeling of panic and adrenaline burst through his veins, making his heart skip too many beats and his breathing pick up. Wasn’t anybody there? Couldn’t anyone see him? Where was everybody?
“Help me!” he shouted, voice dry and cracked. His voiced echoed back at him, like a voice taunting him. His own voice was mocking him, telling him with no words that the place he was in was empty. Nobody was there to help him. Just go to sleep, it said. No matter how much you scream, nobody is going to hear you....
If Lavi could endure the stinging pain, he would cry. It all seemed so hopeless. Was he going to die there?
“Help me!” he screamed again, voice taking on a desperate edge-slightly higher, a break in the middle.... “Please...” he whispered. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t remember anything. Why he was there, what happened, where he was before this.... It was such a foreign feeling. He could always remember something, but not... this time.
“Please... help me... please...” he whispered in a sort of feverish mantra to himself, mostly-to keep himself awake. He didn’t want to die. He couldn’t die! It was too soon....
“This is him.” A soft voice floated in from somewhere across the echoing room. It was distinctly feminine, but Lavi couldn’t process anything further than that through the pain racking fog that covered his mind. He heard a gravelly grunt next and footsteps drawing closer, closer, closer....
There was a pause and all Lavi could do was whimper. What were they going to do? Were these people here to kill him? The prospect of death shot through him again like an arrow. Panic gripped his heart, squeezing it, making it hard to breathe....
“He’s alive,” the gravelly voice mumbled. “How old?”
“Six.”
Another short pause and... “He’ll do.”
Do? Do for what? What were they going to do to him? “Don’t!” Lavi managed to shout, raising his arms up to shield himself. A dry sob escaped him. He had never felt such fear before in his life. Not that he could remember at the time at least....
“Put your arms down, boy,” the rough-voiced man sighed impatiently. He gripped the red haired boy’s arms and pushed them away from his face. His grip was surprisingly gentle. This tenderness surprised and confused Lavi and he suddenly didn’t know what to do. “You’re injured.”
Lavi couldn’t find his voice. He had questions to ask, but it was like his throat had suddenly closed. It was stuck together with something and he was suddenly awake that he was very thirsty. “H-how badly?” he managed to wheeze past his parched throat.
“You right eye has been completely gouged out. It’s surprising you aren’t dead.”
Lavi’s entire body seemed to seize up. His muscles went stiff and ridged, mind wiping clean. “My eye...?” he breathed out. His eye... was missing...? That meant... what was gluing his eye shut was... blood? What was covering his clothes in the sticky, stiff substance was his own blood?
He couldn’t even scream-couldn’t even think-as his consciousness slipped out of his grasp like water.
---
“What’s your name, boy?”
Lavi’s hands were shaking. His knees were drawn up to his chest, single remaining eye wide and frightened. Thick gauze covered his right, still fresh with pain and tender with raw muscle tissue. He grasped the hot cup of tea like a lifeline under the green blanket that had been draped over him. He flicked his gaze over to the old man that had taken him in. He was wrinkled and short, just barely taller than the six-year-old boy. He had a singular, long tuft of hair jutting up from his bald head like a gray flame. Dark circles surrounded his sunken-in eyes, making him look something like a panda.
The tiny redhead would have laughed if he could find his emotions. They were locked away somewhere, thickly sealed to protect himself from what had happened. Perhaps that was better, he thought-to feel nothing at all instead of enduring the pain of acceptance.
He still couldn’t remember anything about before he woke up on the ground, either. His memories were a blank slate, having been thoroughly wiped clean for some incomprehensible reason. He didn’t know anything about himself, his parents, friends... all he knew was the name that was given to him by... by....
By someone. It wasn’t his parents, he knew that. All he had was a first name. “Lavi... I think,” he murmured, shrinking away from the old man. He was lighting a pipe with practiced ease, weathered hands placing the tip through weathered lips.
“You think?”
“I... can’t quite remember much from before.”
The old man sighed heavily, plumes of smoke swirling through the air before dissipating up above near the low ceiling. “My name is Bookman. Now drink that tea and get some rest. It will help you heal.”
Lavi took a sip and tried not to gag. The tea tasted awful. It was bitter and watery at the same time. It hardly tasted like anything and he didn’t see how in hell it would help him heal any faster. He still obeyed, though. Something inside of him told him not to defy the old panda. Perhaps it was something from before, something that conditioned him not to disobey adults?
He finished it down in a few gulps, glad to have something-even if it did taste like dirt and leaves-to soothe his burning throat.
“From this day on, boy, your name is going to be Bookman Junior,” Bookman rumbled around his pipe.
Lavi stared at the elder. “Can... can I still use my given name?” he asked softly.
Bookman scoffed, shaking his head. There was a drawn-out pause between the two only to be broken by a growled, “If you must.”
---
Lavi tried not to throw up at the sight before him.
Another time, another place, another murder.... The young boy had figured out early on what exactly a Bookman did. In a big city like New York, gangs ruled the dirty streets, coated with dirty blood. It was a Bookman’s job to go from one to the other, undercover, and record and document each gang’s movements for the Bookman Society-the so-called ‘secret police’ of the big city.
Over the years, the redhead had thought that he would get used to the sight of murder and carnage. But even after three years, the sight of blood still made him want to gag. Flashbacks of the day he awoke on the floor three years before flooded back to him. The smell of blood, the sickening pain, the icy coldness that had taken a hold of every limb in his body.... It had taken him a long time just to not to keel over and silently scream when he thought about it.
But now, he could stare at a newly dead body and hardly flinch. At nine-years-old. His stomach may still churn nauseatingly and his palms still sweat, but he no longer showed any outward fear of the act of murder. In his job, he saw it all the time.
“Bullet through the temple. Close range,” the redhead said softly to the elder at his side, only a slight waver to his voice. “It’s definitely Daisya,” he sighed. Even through the dried blood and scattered brain matter, the young boy could make out the light brown hair, the blue eyes now covered in a milky white film.... It pulled something inside of him-something deep and dark and sad. Daisya was hardly older than him.... “I guess they got him first, huh?”
Bookman nodded and grasped Lavi by the shoulder. “We should leave before we’re seen with the body.”
Lavi could only agree.
---
“You still don’t remember anything from before, do you?” Bookman murmured, gnawing on the butt of his cigarette. Central Park was covered in a thin sheet of snow, making it glimmer in a quiet sort of elegance. The lamps were switched on, darkness descending up the park like a thick quilt, pinpricked with silvery stars and pale moonlight. Swatches of orange flickered along the footprint embedded snow from the streetlamps, glistening silver and gold, reminding one of Christmas and New Years and all the good things that were associated with winter....
But Lavi didn’t have time to think of the good things.
He could only see the bitter brutality that the season brought on, same as every other. Instead of shimmering gold, he saw sticky red blood running through the snow like wet, crimson ribbons, staining its symbolic ‘purity’ with cruelty and malice.
“Sorry, Gramps.” Lavi grinned apologetically, burying his face further down into the orange scarf wrapped around his neck. The air was cold that day and it wasn’t like they had anywhere to stay at the moment.... “Six years of my life are still missing somewhere.”
Bookman grunted and kept walking through the dark, quiet park. “Perhaps it is permanent amnesia,” he sighed. “At least you have a knack for remembering important things, Junior.”
Lavi rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets. He wondered suddenly why New York had to be so damn cold in the winter, especially with the drunk crazies wandering around Manhattan at night, begging for a buck or a hit. Coupled with the current chill, Lavi didn’t know how he was supposed to take it.
He turned his eyes back to the street lamps and their cold, yellow glow. He could see the snow gently raining from the sky to float down and join the other flakes accumulating on the ground. He thought of other people-families-at this time of year. They would be getting ready for Christmas, wrapping presents with satin bows and colourful papers; baking hams or turkeys, mashing potatoes and baking crisp, apple pies. He thought how they would curl up together around the gentle, warm glow of the hearth and fire, the soft pop and crackle of wood-and possibly television in this day and age-filling the air.
There were days, even after nearly twelve years of being a Bookman, in which Lavi yearned almost painfully for a normal life. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve the life he had now since he had no recollection of his past. Did he even have parents? Or did they abandon him as a child, leaving him to the men who nearly killed him? Questions floated flightily through the redhead’s mind, only to flit away unanswered. Would he ever have answers? Or would he live his entire life in conjecture, watching people kill and be killed just as Bookman did?
Lavi pulled the orange blanket taut around his body. He didn’t want to think about something like that. He didn’t want to think that he would spend the next endless years of his life on repeat, going from place to place with no hope for the future, only looking at the past. Something must have flickered across his face because Bookman was staring at him with what seemed like concern.
“We have another job,” the old man grumbled. “So wipe that worried look off your face, we’ll be out of the cold soon.”
The redhead smiled with bitter contempt. The only way for them to get out of the cold lately was to get another job. Stuck on repeat....
---
The first thing Lavi could recognize when he woke up was the sharp sting in his cheek. “What the-”
“Get up,” he heard Bookman hiss. Before the redhead could even think of processing what the old panda had said, there were small, yet surprisingly strong, fingers wrapped around his wrist and pulling him out of bed. “We’ve been found out, idiot. I’m not exactly sure how, but we have. They’ll be here in less than three minutes.”
Lavi’s eye widened and his mind blanked. What?! How? They had never been found out before, so... why now of all times? “Gramps, what do you-”
“Shut up and hide,” Bookman snapped, voice taking on a tone of finality. The green-eyed teen immediately shut his mouth and nodded quickly. He had learned by now not to defy the old man when he had made up his mind. Lavi grabbed only a few things that were important to a Bookman-his pen and journals. He had to record what had occurred because it was his job and without that... what was he?
The redhead was pushed with a frustrated sigh into the back of an adjacent closet. “Hey, Gramps, aren’t you coming in, too?” he hissed, holding the door open before Bookman could shut it. He knew he shouldn’t be afraid. Bookman could make it out of anything alive.... So what was this anxious churning in the pit of his stomach?
“No. If they find me, they won’t look as hard for you. You need to carry on the job as Bookman, Junior.”
“What?! No way, Gramps, you make it sound like you’re going to die or something!” There was a sort of frightened panic rising in his voice. He tried to keep it at bay, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of Bookman-the man who was practically a father to him when he never had one-dying was almost too much for him to bear....
“Just keep quiet,” the elder hissed, nearly slamming the door after that.
Lavi had half a mind to reopen the door and give Bookman a piece of his mind. Before he could wrap his fingers around the door handle, though, he heard muffled, hushed voices in the other room. He couldn’t make out who it was, but he knew he heard the rumbling growl of Bookman in there. They sounded argumentative, but reserved, like that of a heated debate.
But the voices soon grew from hushed to raised and angry, snarling at each other like rabid dogs. Lavi wasn’t sure what was going on or what was going to happen and he found that so worrisome that it felt like it was eating away at the pit of his stomach. He stood up, ready to help Bookman in any way he could, hand grappling for the doorknob in the inky darkness.
And that was when he heard the gunshots.