Title: Deluge
Rated: PG-13
Pairing: TykixLavi (of a sort)
Summary: Despite everything, the cycle would continue. Death and war, peace and concord. The Bookmen know this best.
–
“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The mountains of Laos swelter with the promise of rain. The air is heavy with precipitation, waiting for the deluge of the monsoon season to sweep down the rugged slopes and the rice patties that pattern the mountainside. Over the past week, Bookman has grown moderately accustomed to the humidity, although the urge to jump into the river and stay there has yet to abate. However, it isn’t a scorching kind of heat, the kind that makes it burn to simply draw breath; and the nights are fairly cool, despite the perpetual moisture that makes him want to pluck at his clothing for how it clings damply to his skin.
During the day, the jungle rises up in a cacophony of ululating birdcalls. At night, it is quieter and Bookman has taken to sitting in the doorframe of the hut the villagers have vacated for his temporary stay, feet curled up beneath him. Despite their abundant superstitions, the villagers are kind, almost to a fault. When he’d arrived, they’d offered him a house and three meals a day, although Bookman makes sure to do his part in the preparation and at least try to earn his place among them, even if it is only for a brief time.
They are a happy people, who work in their vast gardens from dawn until sunset, and then work again without complaint to prepare the evening meal. Sometimes, they gather at the village center to share food and sing songs about maidens who are snatched away into the night by handsome spirits. They tell tales of travelers who wander into the mountains and lose themselves in the mangled vines of the jungle, eventually forgetting not only their destination but all that they were before.
Bookman slides his feet along the wooden floorboards and admires how bright the moon appears, in the absence of harsh city lights. The relative silence, the sultry quality of the air and the heat that sits in all the crevices of his skin lend themselves to nostalgia and recollection. The pungent smells of the livestock, the dialect of the villagers, even the food are evocative of his travels through China and then Japan… of the ache of sore muscles and bandaged wounds and the sharp odor of sulfur and decay of the akuma.
***
Before making his way up to the mountain village, Bookman had passed through Vientiane for a meal and a night’s rest. Rumors had arisen after the mysterious deaths of a few villagers who’d stepped off the mountain trails, and of those who returned changed, mad with fever and then died shortly after. The people whispered of mountain trolls and angry spirits, but to Bookman, it was far more reminiscent of the phenomena that surrounded a piece of the Innocence.
He’d taken his evening meal in a small restaurant, eating his clear noodle soup in front of the window and watching the passersby through the filmy glass. It was then he’d smelled it, the scent just barely perceptible and unnoticed by everyone else. It was astringent; it made his nostrils itch, the scent of something not quite human – just a hint of sulfur and something else, something indefinable, but powerful.
Bookman laid a few bills on the table before standing and making his way into the crowded street. He sniffed lightly, trying to pick up the wisp of scent again, but the air was dense with aromas from the numerous vendors and food stalls. He ducked into an alley, hoping to clear his nose a bit from the barrage.
La… vi…
Bookman spun on his heel, gooseflesh rising up along the back of his neck and arms. At the end of the alley, a hunched figure sat against the grimy walls, head bowed over his knees. He moved forward, footsteps loud in the strange and sudden silence. The figure looked up at his approach.
It was an old man, face streaked with dirt. He gave Bookman an empty look.
Bookman released his breath. Just a normal human. Or at least, he assumed so. The akuma smelled indistinguishable from other humans when they weren’t in their true forms. He dug out a few bills from his pocket and gave them to the man – who smiled and nodded in gratitude – before hurrying back up the alley and into the open street.
***
It has been nearly ten years to the day since Allen defeated the Millenium Earl and purged himself of the Fourteenth. They’d known, as they’d stood amidst the rubble of the Black Order’s Headquarters, that some day the Earl would return. Despite everything, the cycle would continue. Death and war, peace and concord. The Bookmen know this best.
But until then, they would relish their hard-earned peace. The akuma who’d survived still create trouble from time to time and the exorcists have yet to become obsolete, still searching the globe for the final pieces of the Innocence.
Bookman thumbs Tettsui, strapped to his side where it has remained for the better part of a decade, and sits again in the open doorway of the hut, feet planted on the wooden steps. Despite that he is now Bookman and knows intimately the role he plays, he has no illusions as to why he is here. The Black Order still holds strong in its various branches around the world and he arrived here, not just on the off chance he’d have something to record, but on the hope that he’d also run into Finders. And maybe… maybe a familiar face.
Allen, he knows, won’t come. He has kept track, in his roundabout ways, of his old comrades in the passing years. General Allen Walker practically runs the Black Order now, with Komui as his immediate subordinate. Lenalee and Kanda and Chaoji and the others… they still work as exorcists for the Order, although now they each have pupils of their own to train. Bookman still thinks the idea of Kanda reporting to Allen is akin to a war zone and he smiles at the mental image.
Lavi is a memory. He and his predecessor had left the Order shortly after the defeat of the Earl. Bookman knows that it’s folly to cling to his memories… but even so, dropping by the Order has occurred to him countless, innumerable times. Unfortunately, he still meets with his master on a biannual basis and even now, there is very little he can hide from him, least of all a visit to his past.
Nature calls so he pushes to his feet and makes his way into the trees. The shoes he’d bought in Vientiane are sturdy and light, but he still feels the need to slip them off every few hours to keep his feet from feeling baked. The soles of his shoes make no noise as he slips through the underbrush. He has just touched the waist of his pants when he smells it.
It is faint, just discernable beneath the earthy musk of the jungle. It hints at something that isn’t quite human, not like an akuma, but something more.
Bookman has had a suspicion since that day in Vientiane. But he has been reluctant to explore it because, from what he knows, all the Noah disappeared when Allen destroyed the Earl. At that point in the war, only two had remained alive to fight at the Earl’s side. Road Camelot and Tyki Mick had been the ones left and they had both vanished after the Earl’s defeat.
However, despite their disappearance and the fact that nothing has been heard about them for a decade… it doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t still living, biding their time until the Earl’s return, whether it be in a hundred years or a thousand. The idea is worrying, but it is a possibility he has acknowledged.
He finishes his business quickly before slipping deeper into the jungle. The usual sounds of nocturnal creatures flit between the trees and fronds and Bookman moves carefully among them. There are predators aplenty without the threat of akuma or Noah. Up ahead, he hears the burble of the creek the villagers use to haul water from during the day. At night, no one ventures here for fear of the water demons that, according to the local superstitions, dragged their souls from their bodies and into the depths of the murky water.
Bookman peers out from behind the trees. Against the flickering light that reflects off the surface of the water, the silhouette of a man sits, perched on a flat rock along the bank. He steps forward, hesitantly, and the man’s head turns. In the moonlight, Bookman makes out the curve of his cheek and the loose curls of his hair.
“Nice to see you again, Exorcist.”
The sound of his voice is startling and Bookman pauses. He swallows around the lump in his throat before moving again towards the lone figure, his hand reaching for Tettsui.
“Tyki Mick,” he says, and the venom in his voice surprises him. The old fury wells, strangely familiar but fitting oddly in the hollows of his chest. Everything has changed since that time, but still… “What the hell are you doing here?”
Tyki regards him for a moment. “Ah,” he says, apparently disregarding Bookman’s question. “I seem to be mistaken. You’re not an exorcist anymore, are you?”
Slowly, Bookman releases Tettsui. “What are you doing here?”
“Why don’t you tell me that, Bookman?” There is the same deceptive humor in the tilt of his lips, the odd charisma he seems to wield as well as any weapon. But despite the man’s scent, there is nothing threatening in the way he sits, shoulders slightly curled into his thin frame and all that latent power bundled tight inside him, unreachable.
“Are you the source of all the rumors?”
Tyki shrugs and the movement, despite his shabby appearance, is bizarrely regal. “Who knows? These people are eager to blame everything on their superstitions. Do I look like a mountain troll to you?”
Bookman takes a closer look at the man before him. Tyki’s hair hangs around his face and shoulders in scraggly curls. His clothes are worn and he imagines they’d look a sight worse with better lighting. His cheeks and chin are shadowed with stubble and his eyes… Bookman can’t see his eyes in the dark and wishes suddenly for daylight.
Bookman glances away. He senses no danger from him, but just looking at Tyki strikes odd notes in his chest. His mind churns back years and years to the car of a train, Krory freshly liberated from his castle and so aggravatingly – and yet endearingly – naïve. To Allen, whose smile drew everyone around him to smile in turn, despite that the happy line of his mouth hid a plethora of secrets. About as many secrets as those that had lurked behind the scruffy looking stranger who’d conned Krory out of his wardrobe.
“Why are you here, Bookman?”
The question jars him back to the present. “I asked you first.”
“I think you know the answer.”
Unease stirs inside him and he steps back. Away from the man and the answer that comes easily, if painfully: for a chance encounter with the past. He doesn’t miss the irony that that is exactly what he’s found after all.
***
The following day, the rain rolls in from higher ground, the mist rising over the canopy in great amorphous clouds. It is a veritable tempest and more than once, Bookman wonders if the thatch roof of his hut will hold against the downpour. Despite that the torrential rain keeps everyone confined to their huts, he still opens his door and sits himself in the frame to watch the water carve pathways through the earth, thick rivulets leading downward towards the creek.
Days pass and the rain continues to fall in steady sheets. Beneath the cool scent of the rain, the redolence of earth and trees, he can still smell it. It is less a scent now and more a feeling… an indisputable sense of the power trapped beneath the weathered skin and fine bones of Tyki Mick’s hands.
***
Finally, the storm gives way to a drizzle. The villagers gladly break free of the narrow walls of their homes and return to the mountainside to ensure the health of their crops. The children hop through mud puddles, of which there are many, and laugh when Bookman joins them, chasing their squealing, darting forms between the arrays of huts. Afterward, covered in mud, he makes his way back to the creek to wash off, despite the villagers’ warnings that it isn’t safe after dark.
The water level of the creek has risen considerably, swollen beyond its natural border by the heavy rainfall. At its edge, Tyki sits on the same broad rock, presumably dragged from its previous position to keep from being swallowed by the water. Bookman wonders exactly how the man is getting along with no visible shelter or food… but he seems no worse for wear than the last time Bookman had seen him so he obviously has his own means.
Bookman wades into the brown water, tugging his shirt up over his head and dunking it when Tyki speaks.
“There is nothing here for you to record, Bookman.”
Bookman considers this. He rings his shirt as dry as it’s liable to get (which is not very) before slinging it over his shoulder and splashing his chest to wash away the mud. “Nothing has happened yet. But I’ve learned to be patient.”
“Oh? No more brash attacks?”
Bookman ignores the jibe and finishes rinsing as much dirt as he can from his hair before rising from the water and returning to the bank. His toes squelch inside his flooded shoes.
In spite of himself, he is curious how Tyki would fair in a fight now. His Noah is dormant although he still emanates with… something unnatural and pointedly nonhuman. While Bookman still isn’t entirely sure what Allen had awakened that day he’d cut Tyki’s Noah inside the Ark, unless his abilities spontaneously returned, Tyki has nothing of interest for Bookman to record.
“I’m not that person anymore.”
“No…” Tyki glances away, eyelids drooping for a moment as if the weight of them were too much. “I suppose you’re not.”
***
The Finders arrive two days later. Bookman stumbles across them while returning from bathing and their loose uniforms, the equipment strung around them, are familiar enough that he recognizes what they are on sight.
They, however, have no idea who he is. Bookman quickly introduces himself and ignores the way his chest aches when they remove their headgear. The looks in their eyes are telling and Bookman can see clearly, through the sheer volume of all that he has recorded, that while they believe wholeheartedly in their cause – to find the Innocence and protect it – they have never known the misery of failure at the hands of an akuma. They have not known despair, nor the turmoil of war and watching their comrades fall, one by one, to a Level Four.
Bookman rubs at a spot on his chest and wonders if it is envy or resentment that has settled there. He suspects it is a bit of both.
The Finders have heard of Bookmen, despite having never crossed paths with one, and eagerly accept his company on their mission. The experience of following the men as they traverse the jungle seems an act of masochism on Bookman’s part, as he continues to brush his fingers along his shirt, as if expecting to find the cross of the Black Order still there, sewn into the breast of a long discarded uniform.
When the men set up their equipment, they are alarmed to find their Innocence detection devices immediately point at Bookman. Bookman reassures them by taking out Tettsui. When they find out he was once an exorcist and a contemporary of Allen Walker, they turn eyes full of wonder at him and the screw in his chest twists tighter.
They linger for a few days, testing their devices in all the places the villagers had pointed them towards, but they find nothing in the way of Innocence or akuma. Bookman doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. They return to the village where the Finders contact HQ through a golem, although it is a new design and more advanced than the ones in use during Bookman’s time as an exorcist. They confirm with their superiors that the disturbance was not related to the Innocence and far more likely simply an escalation of superstition-based rumors.
Before they leave, Bookman asks them to deliver a greeting on his behalf to General Allen Walker, should they see him, and they agree with hearty smiles and much good humor. It seems Allen is still a well-loved figure among the majority of the Order.
***
“What have you been doing to the villagers?”
Tyki regards him with that enigmatic smile that is evocative of far too many memories. “What makes you think I’ve done anything to them? If they prefer to believe my presence in the area is a supernatural disturbance then who am I to dissuade them?”
“Just answer me truthfully.”
“Why? So you can make use of your Innocence again?”
Bookman’s jaw clenches and he draws in a slow breath before speaking. “No. Bookmen do not interfere; they only observe.”
Tyki snorts and the sound seems almost too crude for him. “Is that so, Lavi?”
Bookman flinches and hates himself for it.
“I recall you were fairly meddlesome during the war.”
“Did you, or did you not, having anything to do with the villagers dying?”
“… What does it matter if I did? What will you do? Record it? It’s hardly noteworthy.”
Bookman’s fists curl at his sides and the frustration roils in his gut, although from where it stems he isn’t even sure. The time when he’d have risen up in offense or a wounded sense of justice had passed when he’d given up his name as Lavi. “You knew the finders would come.”
“Yes,” he says. “As did you.”
“What is it you want?”
The corners of his lips curl just a fraction and he looks up, blinking at the rain that continues to fall in a misty haze. For a long moment, there is silence between them and Bookman begins to wonder if Tyki might not even have an answer.
“…There’s a folk tale that the natives tell here, did you know?” Tyki says, voice soft. “If you wander into the mountains and lose your path in the mist… you eventually forget yourself as well. All that you were. All that you were meant to be.”
Bookman closes his eyes and contemplates all the possible reasons one might choose to venture into the jungle, with no intention of returning. The results strike against his chest, like a hammer to a nail.
“I am Bookman. It’s my duty to remember.”
***
“What does it feel like… being left behind?”
“What does it feel like… leaving behind everyone you’d known?”
***
Bookman spends his nights at the creek, speaking in low tones with this strangely poised man, the remnant of a Noah he’d once fought against and, in all seriousness, had tried to kill. But now, despite his aura of sealed power, Tyki is relatively harmless and Bookman… well, Bookman is no longer Lavi.
He grows accustomed, in minute degrees, to Tyki’s presence – the last of many signs that, perhaps, it is time for him to continue on. It is well into the monsoon season when Bookman accepts that his departure is long past overdue.
When he tells Tyki this, Tyki simply nods, as if having expected it.
“Go where history will take you, Bookman.”
Bookman feels he should say something, well wishes or thoughts of success for his goals or something equally formula, but he finds himself unable to deliver an insincere parting. He wishes Tyki well, that much is true, but not in his peculiar pursuit of fulfilling some misbegotten myth.
So instead, he says, “You know… it’s not such a bad thing. To remember.”
Tyki turns to face him on the bank of the creek, grown even larger now in the past weeks. There is a foreign look in his eyes as he leans forward and Bookman feels like he’s drowning in the melancholy lines of Tyki’s face.
“Remind me then.”
Bookman closes his eyes and Tyki’s mouth descends on his. His lips are chapped, dry skin rubbing lightly against his own. Cool hands brush his cheek and Bookman leans into the heat of Tyki’s body, despite the humidity that lingers even through the rainfall, pressing with imaginary weight against his shoulders.
It has been a long time since Bookman has touched anyone, having been immersed in his duties since shedding the last of his aliases. He has recorded the unfolding of history, watched it swell and dip, watched people break upon its jagged edges, and then watched it pass by… He has already spent so long looking back, studying the stones that have fallen to form the path he’s taken, that ever important path that Allen had always been so keen to forge on his own.
Perhaps, just this once, it was okay to stop and hold it again…
In all the time he has spent in Tyki’s company, he has not once touched the man. But Tyki is solid and warm, his skin smooth in places, rough in others, and certainly not the apparition the villagers have made him out to be.
He clutches at damp skin and worn cloth, moving in wanton ways beneath the press of the other man’s body. It’s confusing and overwhelming and he commits to memory the curve of Tyki’s hip, the dip of his back, that small beauty mark beneath his eye. He wants to simultaneously crush him beneath the weight of his Innocence for all the wrong Tyki has done to him, to his friends, to the world… and cradle that angular jaw between his hands and cherish this bit of him, this bit of Lavi that has returned to him, if only briefly.
***
Bookman leaves in the morning. He bids farewell to the villagers, who give him small mementos to commemorate his stay with them as well as rice and cured meat wrapped in banana leaves to sustain him until he reaches the nearest bus station, some ten miles down the mountain path. He bids farewell to the mist that clings to the mountainside and wreathes the trees in shawls of gray, and to the steady surge of the overflowing creek that whispers of dissipating memories.
The end