Chapter Text
Lenalee was suffocating.
Her mind raced as the thought hit her, and she shot bolt upright before she could process where she was. Her chest was heaving, throat constricting as she gasped for air that she couldn’t find. What was happening? Where was she? She threw a wild eye around her surroundings. Her bedroom.
She coughed then, a sputtering, involuntary burst that almost pried her airway halfway open. A thread of oxygen worked into her lungs, and she grasped at it. Was she choking on something, or was she just in a panic? Her vision was blurry and swimming in the dark, but her sense of the world was slowly creeping back. She could almost feel the springs below her now as her room came into half-focus in the gloom.
She tried again for a breath, less frantic than before. A hand to her throat felt the muscles there contract, and to her surprise, the air leaked in with far less of a fight than before. Was she okay after all?
She took another gasp. The air in her room felt stuffy; her brow was slick with sweat. She’d been having a nightmare.
Her breath began to level as she calmed, and she placed a pair of fingers to her pulse. It was quick, but no longer as wild as it had felt a moment before. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, but as far as she could tell, she had no fever. Carefully, she began to accept that she was okay. Nothing had happened but a bad dream. A bad dream that had choked her half to death, but a dream all the same.
She stood once her body felt steady again. The stained glass in her window dimmed the moonlight, but with a squint, Lenalee could just make out 2:00 am displayed on the face of her clock. Too early to get up, but too dark to return to bed. The nightmare was long gone, but it had left a bad taste at the back of her tongue. It felt like bile, and vague impressions of violence pulled at her mind as she tried to remember what had scared her. Soldier though she was, she had always hated confronting blood and loss, and she suspected that pushing her memory would bring her nowhere good.
With a grimace, she weighed the choice of going back to bed. She doubted that sleeping with those thoughts on her mind would bring pleasant dreams, and another nightmare was the last thing she needed. She’d be moving out to the new Order building the next day; she couldn’t afford to feel haunted. The move would be bad enough without her jumping at every sound or drifting into unpleasant daydreams.
She glanced around the room again, straining her eyes against the dark. She needed to clear her head, but the old castle window in her room didn’t open. She’d have to go outside if she wanted air.
She fished a sweater from her closet and slid it on as she slipped into the dim lamplight of the hallway. Other exorcists’ rooms were all around her, circling the center of the castle, and she made a quiet wish that nobody would notice her make her escape. The lingering pressure in her lungs was, Lenalee knew, more than enough to make her burst if she tried to talk about what she had dreamed, and she did not want to spend moving day listening to her brother scream about how some golem had recorded her crying into a comrade's arms in the middle of the night.
At the very least, she needed to be somewhere away from prying eyes.
The night was cool beyond the castle walls. Autumn air swirled around Lenalee as she walked—crisp, sharp, and clarifying. It melted away the lingering fear of the nightmare, leaving her free to enjoy the night for what it was. The familiar castle loomed above her head in the moonlight.
She’d be moving to the new building the next day. This was her last evening in her home.
The earth was soft and damp beneath her feet, strands of grass and weeds pressing between her toes. She hadn’t been shoeless outside in years. The plants were welcome, pleasant, even, but the damp was not. She’d track bare footprints back into the order, which the guards would surely look at her sideways for. Her lack of shoes was another thing that she did not want to explain to Komui.
She squinted into the darkness as she reached the thick line of trees around the walls, struggling a bit to find the narrow path outlined between them. There were no formal trails through these woods, but Kanda, though he’d never admit it, was careful not to destroy too much forest when he trained. He had designated areas, walkways marked by carved-up branches and trampled undergrowth, and Lenalee had accompanied Kanda on enough early morning training sessions to memorize where most of them led. She wanted to reach the deepest part of the woods without getting lost, and Kanda’s trail would get her there.
Something shuffled in the distance—a bat, most likely—and Lenalee’s mind began to wander as she imagined what might have made the sound. The thought of another person out there was romantic, in a way. She liked the idea of finding a friend in the woods, another sleepless exorcist or friendly finder with a craving for fresh air and a nightmare to get off their chest. It would be a good chance to catch up with someone. It had been too long since she’d had a good talk with somebody about the things brewing behind the closed doors of Central, and it was not helping her anxiety.
As she turned the fantasy over in her head, one name began to stand out in her mind; this would be a wonderful place to find Allen. He’d been so distant lately, caught up in the worst of the order’s suspicion and bureaucracy. She hadn’t seen him without Inspector Link by his side in weeks, let alone have a real conversation with him. Seeing him so sullen and being unable to help was heart-wrenching on the worst days, and bitter even on the best. He’d felt so intimate on the ark, his words kind when she wanted it and stern when she needed it. He’d guided her hand when she’d struggled, caught her when she fell, and held her to reassure her when she was scared. Now that they were back, however, he hadn’t come near her once outside of training and meals. The eyes of Link and her brother weighed heavily on him, so it seemed.
She couldn’t blame him for that, not really, but it was driving her crazy. Even Kanda had been warmer in recent weeks.
In front of her, the wall of trees gave way suddenly to a small moonlit clearing. This was what she’d been looking for.
The wind picked up in the leaves above Lenalee’s head as she stepped forward, the sudden volume catching her breath at the back of her throat. A few yards past the far side of the clearing, the woods dropped off into a sharp cliff, and that cliff kept the winds nearby wild and quick. The cool moonlight gave the trees an ethereal air, and combined with the endless wind and the perfect roundness of the space, the clearing always made Lenalee feel as though she was stepping into another world.
Kanda had carved this space out years ago as part of his training, and a few felled tree trunks still remained around the edges. They made wonderful benches, which was why she’d convinced him to keep them. She sat down on the closest one, flexing her toes in the earth again as she did. She was growing used to the nighttime dew—it was almost refreshing if she didn’t think too much. It suited the cool of the air.
Leaning forward on the log, she could brush her fingers against the innocence around her ankles. It was sleek, icy smooth but strangely warm. It buzzed faintly when she touched it, not a tangible vibration, but an electric sensitivity inside her fingertips. Her old boots, constructed from a normal pair of shoes, had never felt that way unactivated.
With a sigh, she reclined back, away from the bands on her legs. She was grateful for the power she’d been given, she really was, but in her quiet moments, she couldn’t help but find herself resenting the weapon’s chosen form. She had a long, ugly history with metal cuffs, and on the worst nights, the feeling of her new ones awoke a terrible hate in the pit of her stomach. She would shiver in those dark moments, her skin itching to wriggle free and run away, and she would have to repress those urges. Have to remind herself that like it or not, and she really did like it some days, the Order was her home.
Tonight, though, was not one of the worst nights. Her nightmare had been awful, but the air was cool, and the windy moonlight was sweet. She was at home.
Lenalee slid down from the log as she lost herself in thought again, resting her back against the rough bite of the bark. The dew would leave stains on the back of clothes, but with her anxiety settled, she was past caring. The sound of rustling picked up again with the wind, a handful of leaves tumbling into Lenalee’s lap from above. There were clouds moving in the distance, but it was too soon to tell if they'd stray close to the precious moonlight.
As she drank in the night, Lenalee began to pick up on the sound of something out of place behind her. There were extra sounds amid the wind: the crackle of stiff undergrowth, the snap of fallen twigs, and a steady, rhythmic crunch that was not unlike bootsteps. She craned her neck behind her, peering into the place where the sounds had come from. There was no trail behind her, which meant it wasn't Kanda, which meant it wasn't someone that knew about the clearing. Though she'd been dreaming of finding a companion before, she realized now that the wrong person finding her could mean trouble.
Another twig snapped, closer this time, and Lenalee caught a flash of a white in the gloom.
“Hello?” she called into the trees. Her voice, tired and unused, cracked as she spoke.
There was a long pause, all sound erased save the endless push of the wind in the treetops. The white shape did not move as its voice rang out.
“Lenalee?”
Oh. Oh! She knew that voice.
“Lenalee, is that you?”
The white shape took another step forward as he spoke, coming into view between two nearby trees. His eyes were wide, his pale features shining beneath the moon.
Lenalee smiled, wide and genuine.
“Hi Allen.”