@lovejapan55 sorry I'm answering to you here instead of under the same post but this got so long my god I always have so much to say when it's about Lavi and Allen lmao
But yeah I actually do think Lavi is worried for Allen, it's just that Lavi's always hidden his feelings given the role he covers (especially now that he's officially Bookman) so you need to read the subtext with him to figure out exactly what he's fishing for most of the time - you can tell he cares and he's still putting Allen first from the fact that his first priority when he woke up to seeing Allen over him was to warn him that the Noah probably knew where he was, now. I mean, by all means if he were putting his role as a Bookman over everything else (which he should have! Since he woke up specifically thinking he couldn't die cause he needed to keep recording!) he would have first worried about Allen curing him and then he'd have mentioned the Noah, since by then they definitely already knew that Allen was there so mentioning sooner or later wouldn't change much - but to me the first couple of pages really do read like Allen worrying over Lavi and Lavi dismissing said worry to worry instead over the danger Allen has put himself into by going to him
But then you have to think about what Allen tells him right after too - I did mention this already but the face Lavi makes when Allen speaks of the other person inside him is interesting, especially because as far as Lavi knows right then the only other person inside Allen is Neah. The page when Allen says that Lavi is this other person's only hope and that he won't let him die because of this is probably the moment Lavi figured something had shifted inside of Allen, and the person he was talking to wasn't necessarily someone he knew (and could trust implicitly) anymore
The thing about Lavi is that he's always worn a mask, but also that said mask has always slipped pretty easily when it came to Allen - putting shipping aside for a short second, under every light and for all purposes Allen is Lavi's best friend. The way Lavi acts around Allen has had Bookman forced to remind him that they're not there to make friends way more than once in the past, and still Lavi has gone so above and beyond to protect him and fight for him anyway that in the ark he outright comes out of a near death experience saying "bookman will be pissed but I don't regret this one bit" - so that Lavi is concerned about Allen is without a doubt, to me. Lavi is always concerned about Allen.
Granted that the person he's talking to is actually still Allen, because this is an exception he makes specifically for Allen.
The reason why I'm pointing all of this out is that if you keep all of this in mind the scene where Lavi asks Allen to tell him what he went through has layers that are pretty easy to understand, imho - it is, on surface level, Bookman asking The Host to tell him his story (because Lavi has always operated with the mask on first and foremost) but at the same time on a deeper level it's Lavi asking Allen how much he can still trust him (because at his core Lavi will always be Allen's best friend, and he will always be willing to bend the rules for him so long as Allen stays Allen).
I think now more than ever Lavi will have to juggle and struggle between his role as Bookman and his identity as Lavi, what is expected of him (what is safe and right to do as Bookman) and what he wants to express (the risks he's willing to take as Lavi), so you can't really expect him to be outright emotive anymore unless it's a really extreme situation, which this obviously wasn't
All that said, I still AM unsettled by that Allen panel! Because honestly Lavi is right, Allen has crossed more than one line since the last time he's seen him (he's revisited his memories from back when he was with Mana and realised that maybe Mana isn't dead, he's remembered his past, he's met Apocryphos and even before then he's left the order with the Noah and started actively going against the innocence - Lavi has been missing for so long that Allen has gone over a million lines since he last saw him), but Johnny and Link have been with Allen every step of the way so why are they surprised by Lavi pointing it out? What has Lavi seen that they haven't noticed in the short seconds Allen has saved him?
Ah, don't get me wrong, I do believe this is another instance in which the masks Allen and Lavi wear around everyone else easily become transparent for each other, I'm absolutely not surprised in the least that out of everyone around him the one that'd immediately notice that Allen has been acting as his former self to hide that something has undoubtedly shifted inside him would be Lavi, but in which way has Allen changed exactly? What does he know now that he's got his memories back, at least partially? Does it have anything to do with Johnny seeing him as Neah when they first arrived there? It's just such an unsettling way to draw him that I can't avoid overthinking it, you know. Like. WHY did Hoshino draw him that creepy what is he hiding !!! it's driving me crazy I can't stop thinking about it
