Title: awaiting the end
Rating: PG-13 for the mood...
Warnings: depression and slight madness (or what you call it before insanity)
Characters: Lavi and a girl he met. No pairings mentioned.
Please interpret freely; there is no right answer.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything. no profit made and no harm done.
Length: flash fiction. 639 words. (I recommend you read aloud...)

Summary: Sometimes Lavi drowns in sadness. Away from the others, and caught up in an unfortunate situation, he looks for akuma in all the wrong places.

Other: (Character study. Third person present.) Set in the "Searching for Allen Walekr" arc.

awaiting the end. by smilingcrescent

Sometimes Lavi drowns in sadness.

After he's bent his mind around recording small details, changed his expression, his voice, and his manner to suit the call, he waits for someone to notice. He waits anxiously; he waits ambivalently.

If they notice, maybe he can find himself amidst reflections in their minds. If they do not, he is safe behind the facade, and he has won the game.

But so far, not a one of them has noticed.

It feels like a small victory.

He smiles fiercely at the girl he's been sent to intimidate, and she steps back. She doesn't know him any longer.

"What happened?" he demands, cold fury bristling on his tone.

She shirks like a dog from flame. "I-I-"

It's always like this when the Bookman fumbles a job. When the old man picked the wrong place to be for a big event. Granted, Lavi doesn't usually wind up threatening his friends, telling them to spill or else, but this in particular was an unusual case. Everyone is getting tense, awaiting the end.

"I know you were there." he says with a noticeable twitch of his hand. It rest near his hammer, and the girl could only think what he might do with it. Doubtless, exorcising demonic akuma didn't even make the list.

"There were men...who came from nowhere." She shrieks. "I-I don't know-"

He cocks his head. Waits.

"And they took him. Took LaCheal, and his face...exploded and-"

Lavi smoothes his expression effortlessly. Allows his almost anger to leave, and raises his chin. "What did they do after the attack? And how did you escape?" The possibility of her being a decoy, or an enemy in disguise flits through his mind. Though her confusion, grief and panic seem real, this doesn't make it any less likely. Be she an unwilling piece in the earl's game or a talented actress, either would make sense.

"They destroyed the church." She wails. "There were so many people. My brother-" the note of hysteria rises, and she breaks off into gasping sobs.

So it was in the church, not the well. Their sources originally documented told of a well that would grant long-life and cure most illnesses, not anything about the local church.

At the first, when they got here, he'd guessed at first the excursion hadn't been an exorcist related business at all. It'd be an uprising, perhaps a change in powers. But no. Ever since the war of innocence started in earnest, that's all the Bookman and he ever did...

Lavi shakes his head. "How?" he repeats, and now he's twirling the hammer lightly, eyeing her with his eye in the most serious of fashions.

Predictably, she steps back. "I...I..." she stammers. "I hid. I really did...they...they must have left quick."

Lavi nods tersely, and manages to growl. "Don't think this is over." He lifts his hammer, readying it for a swing.

She stands stock still, unable to move for fright.

He levels a wide, half circle of an arc at her-

-that swishes through, unable to touch her human flesh.

She sees it as stopping miraculously, millimeters in front of her face. Her eyes snap shut, and she whimpers pathetically.

Lavi smiles tightly. He takes two steps back..and turns away. Not able to look at her, he says to the otherwise empty street, "I'm sorry."

He hears her collapse to her knees, then to a crouched, groveling position. She might have called his name.

But he's running- tearing after the akuma with earnest, hoping they might have left a trail. That the innocence (if there was any), might still be in existence.

And he wishes...that the girl could reconcile his two faces...

That he could.

Instead, he hides his disappointment with a terror of determination.

He can only run.

Thoughts?

I didn't think I'd continue this. ^^ but here is another installment...thoughts? Requests?