D. Gray-Man – Plastic People

‘D. Gray-Man’ by Katsura Hoshino
“Plastic People” by Ryuuzaki Kusakurin

DISLCAIMER: D. Gray-Man never has, and never will, belong to me.

Warnings: Violence, language, etc.
Characters: Lavi, Kanda, Bookman
Theme Songs: Stained Glass Masquerade [Casting Crowns], Howling [Abingdon Boys School], BLADE CHORD [Abingdon Boys School], To Zanarkand [Nobuo Uematsu], LONGING [Gackt], Kiss Me Goodbye [Angela Aki], Lights & Music [Cut Copy]
Pairings: None

This little oneshot-thing is cross-posted to fanfiction.net under the name Ryuuzaki Kusakurin. Nowhere else, tell me if it is.

“You fool,” Kanda hissed, glaring at the rather sheepish-looking redhead. “Not only did you manage to incite every person in the town – which just happened to be mostly made up of akuma – but you also levelled the single area of the town that had real humans in it.” Lavi blushed and rubbed a gloved hand over the back of his neck as he was prone to do, a sure sign that he was obviously embarrassed and ashamed of his own conduct. Not that he’d ever admit it, of course. “I think that you’re the most careless member of the Order,” the Japanese exorcist continued, finally finishing with a wry remark, obviously meant to be sarcastic in its own unique, Kanda-like way. “Congratulations.”

“Awww, why thank you, Yu-chan! I never thought you’d have it in you to finally admit my obvious talent!” the Bookman-in-training sobbed, clinging onto the other exorcist.

“I was being sarcastic, damn rabbit,” Kanda replied, obviously wanting to be disagreeable and easily succeeding – as usual, of course.

“And here I was, thinking that you were being nice for a change,” Lavi whined loudly, following the man nonetheless.

“I’m never nice to people that are annoying, baka,” came the reply as they boarded the train via the usual way – leaping off of an overhead bridge and onto the roof.

“Whatever you say, Yu-chan…” he sighed, only serving to further irk the long-haired man that he called his best friend. Snickering at the obvious anger that radiated off of Kanda, he followed him to the opening in the train’s roof.

—–d. gray-man—–

It turned out that the train had been mostly empty, and as such, they had been afforded the luxury of two seperate rooms in the car. Lavi had been excited at first, but then, once he had been alone in the cabin, he calmed down quite a bit and began to wonder when this plastic facade he had put up – the 49th personality, Lavi – had started being so hard to maintain.

He knew that others were like him in that respect from watching carefully and listening. He was the next in line to succeed the old panda, after all.

Underneath his mask, Allen Walker was afraid of losing everything. He was afraid of being alone in the world again, and afraid of losing his friends and those he considered to be family just because he wasn’t strong enough. He often had trouble sleeping, and he found it nearly impossible to fight the Noah, because he felt that his Innocence was made more for fighting and cleansing the souls of demons – akuma – and not humans. Regardless, he fought despite of – or maybe because of – that fear and uneasiness.

Behind closed doors, Lenalee Lee, too, was afraid. Every friend and family member she held dear was a part of the world that she decided to protect on a daily basis, whether it was from akuma, Noah, or her dear brother’s inventions. She knew that it was her duty to fight until her body stopped being able to fight, and then she would die, but her greatest fear was succeeding. She didn’t want to succeed in the war unless her friends and Komui made it out with her; otherwise, she saw no point whatsoever in living. That very thought scared her beyond reason, but she hid it behind a carefully-arranged mask of cheeriness.

Even Kanda had a mask of sorts – of course, he was usually unpleasant to be around by any standards, but all the same… When he thought he was alone, he would meditate or stare endlessly at the lotus flower in his quarters, hoping beyond hope that another petal would refuse to fall, and that his life would be prolonged another day. It wasn’t that he was afraid of dying, but he refused to fall until the goal was met. Lavi thought he was a good person underneath, but he had seen the other side of Kanda, the side that silently worried over every member of the Order, whether they were nice to him or not. Lavi really did look up to him.

His own mask? It was a carefully compiled web of deception and cheerfulness, designed to make people only look at the surface, where he was Lavi, a bouncing, cheery exorcist with shockingly red hair and an annoying orange scarf that he liked to bat into Kanda’s face. Of course, underneath, he was remembering everything for the sake of history – the secret tomes and scrolls of Bookman’s clan of scribes and historians. He was pretty sure that if he was alone in a room, he wouldn’t start humming tunes off-key just because he felt like it. This personality, the one he had named ‘Lavi’, might, but he wouldn’t. Or would he? He just wasn’t sure where one cover-up ended and where his real personality began. It was a tiny bit worrisome, but if they were just pawns to accomplish one ultimate goal, he could live with that. If he had to keep up his random smiles and awful jokes, then so be it. He would be a plastic person for the sake of the Order and for the sake of human lives. The old panda would think that it was wrong, because he would be taking a side, but he had no problem with it whatsoever. But when had he begun to care? Brushing his red mop of hair away from his face, he sighed loudly and pondered that.

“There’s no point in being a Bookman if our purpose is to watch humans just like us get slaughtered, right?” he asked the window. Pulling out a small book from within his jacket, he wrote the question down. He kept all of his questions in here; the ones that were senseless, like the one on page 224:

‘Why does Yu-chan insist on calling me a rabbit? I don’t hop around that much, do I?’

And then there was the infamous question on page 153:

‘Why does the old panda wear that much makeup? Should I give him bamboo this Christmas?’

He had, in fact, given his mentor bamboo for the holidays, although [and to his eternal disappointment] the panda hadn’t eaten it. Pity.

But there were deeper questions that peeled away the hard-but-not-real substance that made up his surface personalities in there, proving that maybe ‘Lavi’ was the deepest thinker of the clan of Bookmen yet. He dreamed and wondered constantly about life and its meanings, people and their thoughts, and psychological workings in general. He was curious by nature, which is why he was where he was now; maybe he could learn to start peeling away the shell more often.

On the next page, he wrote the only statement in his book that would be just that; a statement and not a question.

‘Maybe I can be a new kind of Bookman – because if we don’t care, then nobody else will care about what happened.’

“Plastic, indeed,” he snorted, shutting the book once the dark ink dried. Tucking it carefully back into his jacket’s inner pocket, he yawned and curled up on the seat of the cabin, falling asleep in a few short minutes.

~ by Larkir Kusakurin on Sunday, 06.04.2008.