Just the word was enough to make Allen flip. He didn't say a thing just walked up to the culprit, pulled his fist back and flung it into his face. "If you ever say something like that about Lavi again, punching you is the nicest thing I'll do!"
Lavi couldn’t say he was even half as affected by the words as Allen was. They were nothing new to his ears. He’d come to realize, after many years, and many Names, to expect no record complete until he’d heard “monster” and worse at some point in time.
It didn’t phase him. Not anymore. Eventually he’d learned to laugh, because how ridiculous was that? To be called a monster by ones bigger, fiercer, uglier than himself. And then he’d learned to be quiet, because it wasn’t even worth the humor of it.
They were nothing but words, fueled by charged emotions, fired off the minds of those little smarter than sheep.
So why care? Why even laugh.
Its nothing but drops of rain off the gloss of duck feathers.
So its easy, to just disconnect, when the name-calling and the ugly words start, and just let them come, and roll off. Rain drops off duck feathers.
What snaps him out of such disconnect, brings out a reaction he otherwise lacked – surprise – is Allen hooking the person with a fist, hearing the person’s teeth snap and their words cut silent.
It leaves him blinking, as dumbfounded as the person who got hit.
And in a moment, its over, and he has a hand on the wrist of the hand Allen used to punch with, keeping him from lashing out further. The look in his single eye isn’t angry, but stern, warning Allen to back down.
❝ It isn’t worth it. People say what they want to. Let it go. ❞
Though his best friend may have been colder and more conditioned to hearing that phrase than Allen was, it still lit a fire deep inside the pint-sized exorcist and Allen wasn’t standing for it. Though his fist made one direct landing, Lavi had soon put a stop to Allen’s violent outburst or else he’d have beaten the culprit to a pulp. Fists still clenched at his sides, he turned to the Bookman apprentice.
Tears of frustration ran down his face, over his scar as he yanked his arm back, freed from his companion’s tight clutches. “Lavi, I’ve told you before. I’m a small man, I can’t just ignore what’s in front of me.” Allen said, rehashing a prior statement made when he was new to The Black Order.
‘Monster’…. That word made Allen’s blood boil as he heard it over and over again in his life time. People could beat him, call him names, imprison him, try to kill him, anything, except hurt his friends, both physically and emotionally. And though Lavi was good at harboring his emotional baggage on his own, Allen wasn’t. He was a natural empathetic, if his friends were hurting, so was he.
Silver locks flew back and forth as Allen shook his head, “It just isn’t right, Lavi…and you and I both know it!”
Lavi hummed, tempering his reactions back. It didn’t matter. Allen’s feelings, though touching, weren’t necessary to him, and so he had to show as much. None of it mattered. They were words and reactions, and he’d learned to tune them out thoroughly.
❝ What is right? ❞ He tilted his head, radiating indifference. ❝ What is wrong? You tell me. ❞
Idly burying his hands in his pocket, his head lazily turned, as if surveying a great expanse of horizon. Entirely unnecessary, also, as there was nothing there to see that he hadn’t already, especially with his trained eye, honed on even the smallest of details.
More than anything, it was to draw the other’s eye into following, in taking the time to look and think, and to cool his head.
❝ To be so willing as to jump so fast to defend is admirable, surely. For some it takes a great deal of courage, for others its just natural and to hold back is the greater courage. ❞
He fixed his eye back on Allen, some three years his younger and still, to him, naive in many ways, and would still be so even when he came to be of Lavi’s own age. As far as he was concerned, emotions were indeed naive. Touching, sure, and sometimes so powerful as to make great change, but that change was not always guaranteed to be good. In the grand scheme of things, it muddled as much as it mended.
❝ You think that you’re being noble, but it wounds me none, so why bother? You throw a punch… they throw a punch… you throw one back. That’s how all pointless fighting starts. Sometimes its better to just do nothing and let it be. ❞
Though the lecture came off as archaic nonsense, Allen soon came to realize Lavi’s entire point. Violence was pointless when you don’t even know what you’re fighting for. It was more a warning to Allen that he needed to cool his head and wait and analyze the situation, then make his move.
They were two different men entirely, like elements of Fire and Snow. Lavi operated on theory, observation, and calculations, leaving his emotions out of it entirely, skills he fine-tuned through his time as a Bookman Apprentice. Allen on the other hand, followed his heart. He was swayed by his emotions and listened more to his heart than his head, which would most likely lead to his demise one day. Though Allen was ever fast to jump in and try and be the hero no matter how much he had to fight, Lavi found it stupid and felt it better to just turn the other cheek and walk away.
And Allen hated that this time he had to agree. Violence only begets violence. What may seem like a noble deed of defense is just meaningless fighting. Lavi could just shake it off and walk away without it bothering him, why couldn’t Allen? And all it was was a petty insult, just a word that only had meaning if you took it that way and let it get to you. ‘Monster’ Why had such a simple word drawn such an emotional reaction from Allen? Because Allen had heard that word his entire life. Misfit, Monster, Freak, Creep, harassed and demonized his entire life, Allen had learned to turn a sympathetic ear towards those who faced the same demeaning treatment, whereas Lavi had shown he’d learned to do the opposite, numb yourself to it, detach from emotions and close your heart off completely.Allen actually found the trait admirable and longed to be able to do the same himself, Lord knows his heart had already been through enough.
Sighing in defeat, he lowered his head, his voice low, yet harsh, he turned and walked away. “I still don’t get how you can be so cold… I’d give anything to be able to detach like you do. Tell me, Lavi. What’s your secret? How do you still consider yourself human and block your heart off at the same time?”
Lavi idly followed the younger Exorcist as he began walking, hands still shoved in his pocket, blissfully unaffected. He’d just let Allen walk off his anger, not necessarily illegitimate in its nature but unneeded. What he’d said was true; words didn’t matter. That’s all they were. He’d heard monster and worse before, but he’d seen things no words could compare to as well.
Why care about what people said, when what people could do was so much more horrifying? People said cruel things they didn’t mean, or that they meant to be kind, and certainly, some used words to lie and cheat, to lessen how bad things really were. Fighting though was different. A fist taken too far or a bullet in a lethal place couldn’t just be walked away from or simply apologized for. A limb lost to canon fire couldn’t just grow back.
People could recover from things that are spoken. He did it all the time, learned to not even listen. It was unimportant, when there were worse things.
Still, the words Allen speaks, while done so out of frustration and misplaced heroism, catch Lavi somewhat by surprise, maybe only because they come from Allen’s lips.
‘How do you still consider yourself human and block your heart off at the same time?’
A small smile breaks across his lips, not so much the pleasant smile he dawns when he’s having too much fun, when he forgets just a little bit about what he’s here for, when he’s entirely absorbed in a newest prank or game. No, the smile that he wears is a little bit humored, a little bit bitter, and just a touch condescending.
Human? There are times, even having grown, learned, changed in ways no previous Name has, that the word, moreover, the very concept of humanity makes him sick to his stomach, disgusted with them in their entirety, again, because of what they can do to each other and everything around them. For a long time, maybe still a little bit now, he’s considered himself something else other than human. Something better than humans are.
Its hard to pin down an easy explanation without saying too much of what he isn’t supposed to, even if Bookman isn’t here to smack him for running his mouth too much. Again, he hums idly, thinking.
❝ Trial and error, I suppose? ❞ Not entirely truth, not entirely false. Its easy, when he’s spent so long on the sidelines, never being involved before now. Watching foolish people kill each other for pointless “causes”. ❝ You just tell yourself it doesn’t matter enough times, and eventually I guess it becomes true. The world is comprised of many different kinds of people, so to deny that someone you don’t agree with is human is a faulty way of thinking. Its Othering, but it doesn’t make them less like you just because you don’t like what you see. ❞
The irony isn’t lost on him, but where Allen sees justification in othering people outside himself, Lavi has always made himself the “other”. He realizes (now, at least) that its hypocritical, but an opposite method for the same outcome.