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(i) enchantment
This is magic, Allen thinks, magic as old as the hills and as sweet as a lovelorn melody.
His fingers reach up to his tie, time and again, and he smiles nervously. He almost can't breathe—the weight of centuries seems to be bearing down on him, and his vest seems too tight and his shoes too big and ungainly. Lenalee doesn't seem to notice, though; she smiles and tells him enchanting stories of her life back in China.
They're making their way to the back porch now, and Allen leans in to catch a whispered word. The word falls softly on his ears, and the slight scent of jasmine and cherry blossom makes him nearly dizzy. They're so close now—he can see her full, thick lashes and her soft, soft skin, and part of him wants to forgo everything and simply kiss her on those lips.
"Lovesick boy," Lavi teases later, but Allen only smiles and nods. He's too enchanted to say a word.
Later that night, Allen takes out the rose she gave him and kisses it. He thinks only of how beautiful Lenalee's eyes were in the moonlight, how her hair was crowned with starlight, and the scent of her perfume in the night breeze, the thunder-beat of his heart as her palm lightly grazed his.
He dreams of her that night, and wakes before dawn to the wheedling lyre of his heart.
Is she thinking of me, he wonders.
He spends the next few hours walking the floor to shreds, thinking of the girl he met just hours ago. He imagines walks on beaches and hour-long talks on the telephone and sharing popcorn at the movies; he wonders at the graceful movement of her limbs and the lilt of her voice and the gloss of her dark hair, and then he smiles again, all over again.
(ii) last night
They sit in silence most of the evening, and go to bed with the chickens.
"Isn't it strange?" Cross asks, removing his vest.
"Yes," Anita said. "Do you want some wine?"
"No, not tonight," he says. "Come here."
Anita looks over; Cross is patting the space next to him. She leans down to blow out the candle and hastens to his side, her silk nightgown rustling softly.
"You never sleep without drinking some wine."
"I want tonight to be different, my dear." He rolls over and takes her into his arms, holds her tight, musses her hair. "I'll be sailing tomorrow."
"That was never any reason to stop you from drinking before."
"I somehow feel... let's just say my sixth sense tells me to enjoy this moment. Hush now, let's just stay like this."
He wakes when the sun rolls round, and watches Anita sleep like a contented child, the morning light leaving a soft glow on her delicate features. She is so still that one might think her lying in eternal sleep but for the gentle movement of her bosom.
Cross lets his fingers linger near her face, ghosting over her smooth, milky skin.
"Goodbye," he says, and leaves the room. His heart, once lost, now swells with something akin to love and worry. Somehow he knows—this meeting will be their last. Time and death will separate them from now on, and he thinks: she knows this too.
But he doesn't look back. He will be, in all likelihood, the one the Reaper will claim. To be sure, the last memory of Anita sleeping peacefully is all he needs, all he wants to remember. There is no need for him to alarm her, to say his final farewell. He will carry this eternal (sappy) flame out into the east until the darkness claims his soul.
(iii) broken hearts
"There is no future for us!" he shouts.
"There is, there is," she pleads, but he shakes his head.
"Not now, not ever, my love. Let's leave this godforsaken place, please. I implore you. We'll bring our little darling with us."
"They'll never let her go!"
"They will. We'll find a way."
"You're crazy," she cries. "We can't."
"Please—"
"No, we can't betray the Order!"
"I'm going, if you aren't."
"Please—" But he's gone, and the silence echoes loudly in her ears before the world fades into darkness.
When she wakes a week later, those white-garbed nurses with their strange, empty eyes shake their heads, and Inspector H. Leverrier comes to see her.
"They tried to escape," he says.
She looks up at him with soulless eyes.
"They were killed by our soldiers for attempting to betray us, you understand?"
"Yes, I understand," she says, though she doesn't, not really. She can't see a good enough reason to justify killing a man who wasn't even an Exorcist, just a Finder, and a little girl not yet seven.
She weeps and weeps, but in time forgets part of her sorrow and takes up her robes again.
Now, a century later, when Inspector Malcolm C. Leverrier stands before Hevlaska and orders her to get Lenalee Lee synchronised with the Innocence, she thinks back to the cold-blooded smile and icy eyes of his forefather. She remembers her lost family, her quiet husband with his brown eyes and thinning hair, and their daughter with her curls and single dimple in her left cheek, and her heart breaks a little, again, the way she never thought it could.
(iv) longing
Even now, Krory still cannot forget.
When the musty rooms and foul plants have long faded into memory, Eliade still remains, always hiding at the corner of his vision.
He can't ever get rid of her. She's there when he wakes, pale in the morning light; she's there in the night, golden hair glimmering, meshed in candlelight.
"Eliade," he calls out sometimes, but she doesn't ever reply, choosing instead to walk a step behind him, head down and tongue silent, a fixture of the shadows.
She's a ghost now, a ghost of his imagination, and he hates himself for doing this to her, for reducing his memory of her to a speechless haint. She was so much more in life—she was Eliade the beautiful; Eliade the sweet, Eliade the witty, who chose to abide with him when she could have made a more exalted place for herself elsewhere, Akuma though she had been.
And now, now she is nothing but a nightmare created by himself: a nightmare, a spectre, simply one among many haunting the ancient halls of the Order.